Fear(s) of the Dark (2007) User Reviews

black and white and shades of grey

[SandsofSamarkand · 7/10 · 5 March 2008]

Peur(s) du Noir is essentially 5 short black and white animations interspersed by segments of a woman droning on about her fears, illustrated with interesting animated black and white shapes (I should note, I watched the film in French, and as my French is not perfect, I did not catch everything she said, but got the general impression that she was your typical anxious overachieving yuppie).

The five shorts all used different animation techniques, but were overall pleasingly creepy. There was a cruel aristocrat and his dogs, an Italian village ravaged by a mysterious beast, a budding scientist and his insect specimens, a Japanese girl bullied by classmates/ghosts, and a refugee from a snowstorm shacked up in a Victorian house. This final short was, I thought, the most effective. It was done in pure black and white, and the only light shed in the house (with wonderfully Goreyesque wallpaper) came from a candle the traveller carried with him in his explorations. This allowed for some great reveal moments, and additionally built up the tension extremely well.

Overall, a must see for fans of art-house animation. If it comes to a cinema near you, take the opportunity to see it, because I suspect it will be difficult to find on DVD.

Over-hyped, uneven series

[Chris Knipp · 7/10 · 13 May 2008]

Here is the producer Prima Linea Productions' summary of the film Fear(s) of the Dark/Peur(s) du noir (2007) which combines the work of eight artists:

"Spiders' legs brushing against naked skin... Unexplainable noises heard at night in a dark bedroom... A big empty house where you feel a presence... A hypodermic needle getting closer and closer... A dead thing trapped in a bottle of formaldehyde... A huge growling dog, baring its teeth and staring... So many scary moments we have experienced at some point in our lives – like the craftsmen of this journey straight to the land of fear. Six of the worlds hottest graphic artists and cartoonists have breathed life into their nightmares, bleeding away colour only to retain the starkness of light and the pitch black of shadows. Their intertwined stories make up an unprecedented epic where phobias, disgust and nightmares come to life and reveal Fear at its most naked and intense..."

The artists are Blutch, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Jerry Kramski, Lorenzo Mattoti, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, and Romain Slocombe. They are designers who have done logos, product designs, and other things besides animation. Some of the black and white drawings are gorgeous, rich, subtle, pleasing to the eye--even distractingly so. Where the images are most beautiful, the animation is most lacking.

The best story is one by Charles Burns of a nerdy boy who loves insects and grows up isolated and timid as a college student. Like the sucker Koistinen in Aki Kaurismaki's 2006 film 'Lights in the Dusk,' he is then seduced by a woman who only wants to entrap and use him, only this one is far more sinister and is perhaps the descendant of a praying mantis-like bug the man lost under his bed long years ago (he still sleeps in the same bed). Combining elements of Poe and Kafka, this story, which sensibly combines story elements that don't quite fit, is genuinely creepy. The drawing is fluent but utilitarian.

Caillou's story is set in Japan and concerns that standard image of Japanese helplessness and provocation to perverts, a uniformed schoolgirl. There is also a sinister doctor with a big hypodermic and the ghost of a samurai and a creature with several layers of eyes. The trouble is that this story frequently interrupts itself and never finishes.

In between these are two other stories, because it is the team's aim to make their omnibus into some kind of seamless whole. First there is the animations of Blutch of the eighteenth-century man with a team of snarling dogs who attack a helpless boy. Then there is the screen of geometric games by Pierre di Sciullo, entertaining us with imagery that ranges from Saul Bass to the Russian Avant Garde, while an ironic, nagging woman (well voiced by Nicole Garcia, who has made a career of this kind of character) lists things she's "afraid of" or doesn't want to become.

Otherwise, I was not very taken by the stories and at times could barely follow them. The device of intermixing two of the animations/short films with the five others is a laudable effort to achieve unity and flow, but it only makes a confusing collection more so.

The language is French, though the team is multinational, including American and Italian. The film was shown at Sundance as part of a horror series. The images have a pencil look, achieved however with the latest technologies. For connoisseurs of black and white drawing in film, this is worth a look for the different styles. But as a cutting edge horror or scare movie or an accomplished series of animations, this collection seems very over-hyped.

The film, shown at Sundance in January 2008 and at international festivals, debuted in Paris theaters February 18, 2008, and is part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, New York, February 29-March 9.

An ambitious experiment in B&W animated horror-suspense

[fastfoodi · 8/10 · 17 July 2008]

A short preface: the device of chopping up and interspersing the segments was not completely successful, in my opinion. The individual episodes would have been more cohesive and effective if each had been told uninterrupted, and this would have benefited the film as a whole.

Richard Mcguire's final segment was far and away the most inventive in the use of shadow/light, and i think was easily the most elaborate and accomplished of all the segments (hence my decision to begin with it). His short alone would have warranted a recommendation for PEUR(S) DU NOIR. (thankfully the producers chose to leave this one intact, and it serves as a glorious ending to this collection. Splendid! 9/10

Lorenzo Mattotti's young-boy-reminiscing/mysterious-beast tale comes in a close second for me.. i especially liked its superb gunshots-in-the-dark climax. 8/10

The impressionistic, primal style of Blutch's opening segment (wild dogs being led around London by a sadistic handler) was more disturbing than frightening (that said, it was hardly unenjoyable), and offered some of the more haunting images of the movie (i daresay this short suffered the most from being split up). A seamless telling would have netted an 8/10, but as it stands, i give this a 7/10

I wasn't so impressed with Charles Burns' segment (creepy tale about a young lad being dominated by a mysterious love interest), although it had its own perverse charm. Reminded me instantly of the Black Hole comics in its artistic style as well as its psycho-sexual overtones (no surprise, then, when i discovered they share the same author!). This one squeaks past 6 to 7/10

Marie Caillou's tale was the least memorable primarily because of its flash-animated visual style. Still, it was surreal and interesting. Once again, this suffered from being told episodically. 6/10

If i had to pick an overall weakness in particular, it would be Pierre Di Scullo's freestyle monologue linking the segments. Occasionally amusing as it was, its accompanying abstract visuals were disappointingly uninspired. Not only was it thematically somewhat incongruent with the rest of the film, the absence of this light-hearted intermission would have made the film more powerful in its entirety (no doubt the intention of the film-makers WAS to afford audiences a brief respite every few minutes from the terror , i felt this decision unnecessary) 5/10

Overall score: an impressive 8/10 (bumped up from 7 thanks to Mcguire)

Shown at Sundance Film Festival '08 - slightly spoiler

[ohm_intern · 27 January 2008]

The story begins with what appears to be an old, sadistic British general walking a pack of angry dogs. A dog gets away and chases a small boy... thus beings one of a few stories of people's fears. The fears displayed in these animated segments usually involve an insect or animal beast. I think that the director either had a fascination or fear of bugs/animals.

In between each segment, a soothing french voice tells us her "fears" but what I interpret as her observations and cristicms of society and social behaviors.

One segment, a man is haunted by a praying mantis; in another, a girl is possessed by the ghost of a samuarai, in another.. a man has an encounter with the ghosts of an abandoned house.

Each segment has a unique art style where people's bizarre fears become their lives. A great artistic representation of how people's fears can so easily become part of their reality - whether those fears are overcome or succombed to.

Savage Pencils

[Ali_John_Catterall · 7/10 · 12 November 2009]

"Drawing", cartoonist Robert Crumb once said, "is just an excuse to crosshatch." That most angsty of illustrative techniques is put to striking and eerie use in Fear(s) Of The Dark, a collaborative showcase which sees hipster artists from America, Italy and France exploring various manifestations of fear to a greater or lesser strike rate.

A main drawback of the film is that it isn't in the least bit scary. Despite the varying grip of the intertwined narratives, however, the artwork is of a consistently high standard, ranging from the dense pencil work of French cartoonist Christian Hincker (aka 'Blutch') to Marie Caillou's manga-influenced techniques and Charles Burns' stark, instantly recognizable style, familiar from 'RAW' magazine, record covers and 'Black Hole' comic, which at the time of writing is a potential comic-to-screen adaptation for David Fincher.

All kinds of nightmares, phobias and neuroses are brought to light (and dark) here, from Cronenbergian body horror (a recurrent theme) and the fear of penetration, to a fear of powerlessness, self-knowledge or social ostracisation; while Richard McGuire's grandstanding finale brilliantly literalises the film's title.

In the first of two repeated interludes, Blutch visits a pack of slavering hunting hounds upon a succession of terrified villagers, while their 18th century master, a frightful wraith in a tricorn hat, cackles with poisonous glee. Rendered in a series of savage crosshatches, this is gory and macabre stuff as the hellhounds tear their prey limb from bloodied limb before turning on their handler who has dared to show them their own reflection.

A second, more tedious bridging sequence features the work of graphic artist and typographer Pierre Di Sciullo, whose abstracts are accompanied by a dreary monologue from Nicole Garcia, endlessly articulating bourgeoisie fears such as "I'm scared of being mediocre"; "I'm scared of being politically unaware"; and "I'm scared about having to explain the superiority of Western culture to an Afghan villager watching TV with me." Yes, we get it.

Charles Burns' EC Comics-inspired yarn riffs on body horror, sexual disgust and male fears of emasculation - all familiar Burns territory - as a strange, humanoid mantis takes its revenge on a nerdy boy who bottled it up years before, taking over his girlfriend and rendering him a helpless brood-mule for its alien spore.

Marie Caillou's twee, brightly shot ghost story, queasily at odds with the prevailing atmospherics, sees a doctor administering frightening sleep-inducing injections to a psychiatric patient so that she may complete her nightmares about her childhood, when she was haunted by a samurai ghost.

Lorenzo Mattotti's tale, richly rendered in charcoal, concerns the hunt for a ferocious, unseen beast which is killing off the populace of a rustic village ("the police fished out the peasant's mutilated head from the river"). A goose's mounting panic, as it is tied to a stick overnight in an attempt to draw the nocturnal monster out, is palpable.

Finally, New Yorker Richard McGuire, who works with hand-drawn paper cutouts, demonstrates what animation is truly capable of using just black and white, as a man takes shelter from a blizzard in a deserted, pitch-black Victorian mansion. With the viewer as much in the dark as the panicked, blundering traveller, McGuire ratchets up the tension, introducing tinctures of organic light from candles or holes in the walls and throwing up strange optical illusions, until finally unleashing the terrible power of a well-timed white-out. Here, an excess of 'light' is to be feared as much as the dark.

All in all, a bit of a hodgepodge, this. Its natural home will be on DVD, where the occasional desire to fast-forward can be indulged. However, fans of the contemporary animation scene will find much to admire here.

Peur(s) du noir (2007) movie review

[simbasible · 7/10 · 12 May 2015]

It is very uneven in terms of quality with the second half being quite weak, not particularly engaging and forgettable, but the first half with the first two segments is terrific with original and authentic stories and very creepy and memorable imagery. However, Fear(s) of the Dark, although very flawed, is mostly memorable for the impressive and beautiful animation with many directors each giving his contribution with his own style ranging from hand-drawn to anime to computer animation. Its second half is weak, but it largely benefits from deft editing, great directing and wonderful animation styles making it a very interesting experience.

chequered dread

[newhealthrock · 9/10 · 20 November 2008]

After seeing Fear(s) of The Dark I think I can safely say I was as, or more, affected than I have ever been after watching a film. Not since the horrific denouement of Haneke's original Funny Games do I think I have even come close to being as physically shook up as I was after seeing this film. A collaboration between six graphic artists and animators, I suppose if it must be distilled into the crudest possible collision of reference points it could be summarised as Stephen King meets Waking Life (Richard Linklater's 2001 film composed of rotoscope animation vignettes) yet that doesn't come anywhere close.

The artists who have visualised nightmares for this project are Philadelphia native Charles Burns, ubiquitous to graphic novel fans due to his masterly disturbing book Black Hole; former Liquid Liquid bassist Richard McGuire; Belgian resident Marie Caillou; Christian Hinckler (better known by his pseudonym Blutch), and Italian Lorenzo Mattotti. Interspersing these animated tales are kaleidoscopic dancing patterns which are, through their hypnotic abstractions, perhaps the most visually mesmerising sequences in the whole film. These patterns are set to the vacuous middle-class fears and worries of a bourgeois woman, and the insubstantiality of her worries sets a theme which extends throughout the film. None of the fears represented in any of the narrative threads are viable. They are all tales of terror which one wouldn't have been surprised to find lurking in a battered Goosebumps paperback in the late nineties. This doesn't matter, though, because the film's power lies in its incredibly paced orchestrations of image and sound.

After a joyously Gothic title sequence in which the film's name flashes on the screen at least five times (in a barrage of words reminiscent of Godard at his most poetically despotic) we are presented with an introduction to Blutch's storyline, which extends throughout the film. A hellish figure dressed in the clothes of a 18th century dandy roams a barren landscape with a pack of ferocious canines, hunting down unsuspecting victims and then proceeding to violently rip them apart (the last of which is a remarkably gory sequence). Ironically, considering the content of these scenes, Blutch's animation style is most reminiscent of either Raymond Briggs (In the constant shimmering of his charcoal textures) or the Walt Disney studios house style (In the fluidity of his characters' movements).

Charles Burns and Lorenzo Mattotti present two sequences which are most reminiscent of scary bed-time stories, both being narrated in first-person. Visually, though, they couldn't be more different. Charles Burns' is, as you might imagine, the most like a moving graphic novel. The art is unmistakeably his, very clean-cut black lines without any grey, and the pictures tell the story of a conscientious student who embarks on a love affair with a girl which descends into an insectoid hell in a methodical, coherent style. Mattotti, on the other hand, tells the story of an eerie beast terrorising a small pastoral community in a free-and-easy sketchy style, with images that swim in and out of view like a dream.

This is not the best representation of a bad dream within the film, though. That accolade goes to Marie Caillou, who presents to us an Oriental phantasm. A macabre inversion of a Studio Ghibli fantasy which gets more surreal as it proceeds, a young girl is tormented by dangers both real and imaginary. Not since The Mystery Man talked to Bill Pullman at the party in Lost Highway has a nightmare been so well orated on screen and it had a large majority of the audience locked in a collective terror.

While Caillou's segment had an undeniable effect on the viewers, the last sequence, by Richard McGuire, is perhaps the most powerful of them all. Employing nothing but block black-and-white shapes to tell the story of a man who is haunted in a house by a mysterious woman, for the most part of his segment he eschews all non-diegetic music. The audience is thereby made extremely sensitive to every single movement made by the objects on screen and so the slightest motion, such as a hat-box dropping to the floor, causes the heart to skip a beat.

Peur(s) du noir (2007)

[SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain · 6/10 · 22 January 2012]

Fear(s) of the Dark isn't the horror film I was hoping for. It's creepy, twisted and dark, but is also distant. It's really a portfolio of work collected by a number of talented animators. Every animation focuses on fear and nightmares in some way. Each of the individual tales has a dreamlike quality, allowing the films to avoid any responsibility they may have to tell a story. Complaining about the story may seem too harsh, but I the end I really had no connection to what was going on. The artistic skills on display can't be challenged in anyway, but so much more could have been achieved with the expansion of just one story. Certainly worth a look for some imaginative imagery.

Interesting Subject Matter and Animation to Present It

[Reviews_of_the_Dead · 8/10 · 10 February 2021]

This is an interesting film that I had never heard of before. It was being shown by the Fright Club Podcast at the Gateway Film Center. Since I love to support these events and the theater, I decided to check this out. Aside from that, I came in pretty blind to this movie. The synopsis is several scary black-and-white animated segments in different styles appeal to our fear(s) of the dark.

Since this is an anthology film, I'm going to break down each segment and give my thoughts that way to keep things in line. The first that we get is broken up into sections and given to us. This is a more traditional looking drawing that is animated. This involves an old man with angry dogs. He continues to unleash these on victims until he only has one left. It is only then does he get his just punishment.

This really sets the tone for what the movie is going to be for me. The artwork was amazing and it looks be done with pencil. It looks pretty life like, especially where we see this old man holding the leashes as these dogs tug at him. He is dressed as colonial United States or Victorian England. This man is really a horrible person. He lets loose his animals on a boy with black eyes, which was creepy, a construction worker and a woman who is dancing. These get more and more brutal as they go.

The next tale is that of Eric (voiced by Guillaume Depardieu). He is an older man who wakes in pain and tells us his story. He is an intelligent child with a thirst for science and knowledge. He finds in a weird hive this insect that looks like a Praying Mantis. He puts it in a jar and brings it home. It escapes, with him never seeing it again. His bed seems to make the noise this insect did and it haunts him. When he goes off to college he meets Laura (voiced by Aure Atika), a beautiful young woman who shows interest in him. The two of them hit it off and she comes back to his place after a date. The following morning he notices a cut on her forearm that is deep. There are some interesting changes that come over her and lead them down a dark path.

This I believe has drawings done with computers. That is not to diminish them, as they look really good. I love the care they took into making this insect. A recap of this story states they're human like. My immediate thought was Praying Mantis which does fit that bill. I like where this story takes us and is one of my favorites here for sure. In part of that is the tragic character that Eric is. He isolated himself due to his interests and now he's lonely. When someone like Laura comes along, he's desperate to make it work. He also has a weird connection where he doesn't want to lose the creature he befriended briefly as a boy. It seems due to his loneliness, he has issues with losing those that he opens up to. This really takes us down a path of sadness and depression.

The tale after starts at a murder the police are investigating. This is a story that I need to rewatch as for whatever reason, it isn't sticking with me. It follows a little girl who moves to rural Japan and is bullied by kids at school. Her doctor (voiced by Christian Hecq), wants her to face this nightmare that she is having which involves of a samurai buried in the cemetery near her house. In this nightmare, she becomes possessed by it and it causes to murder her bullies as well as her parents. The question though is, are these nightmares or reality?

From what I remember, this short is computer drawings much like the previous. I did like the Asian influence and this is also the only one with color in it. This one just really had issues keeping my attention like the ones before it for whatever reason. Once I get a chance though, I will give it a go as I read up on all of these before writing this to just make sure I touched on them all. The ideas of facing our demons and what really could be happening here are really things that tick my boxes.

Another one that really had issues holding my attention is one that follows a man who recounts his time living in France as a child. He lived in a small village where a creature was terrorizing the countryside at night. It was here that he befriended a strange orphan who claims a 'beast from the sky' mauled our narrator's uncle. A great hunter is called in to kill whatever is doing this and the truth is much darker than we realize.

To re-iterate, the focal point of all these is the art used to bring them to life. Some look amazing in the realism, while others do some cool things with the images and taking advantage of the black and white aesthetic. This one is traditional animation and that makes sense. The hunter is disproportionate to real life and reminded me of something you'd see in older cartoons like Popeye the Sailor Man, Looney Tunes or even Disney. That looked cool, but I got a bit lost in the narrative they are giving. I think I figured it out, but it took me reading up a bit.

The last full story is one of my favorites. We have a man who gets lost in a blizzard. He breaks into a house to seek refuge. This house has a dark past though that he discovers through a photo album. This causes him to have a nightmare and ultimately, trapping him in a closet. Is he alone and can he escape?

What struck me about the animation and drawing here is that it is using white to show us images. They're taking a black frame and making either the character we're following white or what is happening in white. It is not giving us everything, but just showing us what we need to while using the soundtrack as well. The guy is exhausted and drinking, so it makes him an unreliable narrator to what is happening to him. For whatever reason, this one pulled me in and I liked how they presented it.

The last aspect is a wraparound that drops in between these stories. It is just a woman, who seems to be telling us or something there about their fears, anxieties and what causes them sadness. Geometric shapes are presented as they move and change as they fit to what is being told to us. What makes this creepy is what you can connect with this character of things being said or how dark her thoughts go.

This is really an interesting animated anthology film. I can't really delve too much more as this movie is really presenting some different looks at fear with different types of drawings and animations. We have the fears of what we might be doing, the fear of nightmares, loneliness, isolation and depression to just name some of the different things tackled in these stories. I think it is beautifully done and the soundtrack really fits to what they're going for here. It does have its limitations in what they're doing since it is a series of shorts that don't fully flesh out some ideas. I did enjoy this overall and would rate it as a final product as above average, bordering on good.

My Rating: 7.5 out of 10

What do you fear most?

[leprutz13-1 · 6/10 · 24 January 2012]

Peur(s) du noir / Fear(s) of the Dark A collection of 6 different, animated, black and white tales where fear is the main protagonist.

Now each tale has a different story to tell, but they all capture quite well, one of our most primal instincts. Fear. And this is delivered through some rather pleasant animation, each one in a different style and also different tone. Those, I would call them somehow modern fairy tales, are located in a different time and space continuum from one another. So you are never at the same place twice.

You should be experienced in watching independent cinema and maybe be a lover of animated movies.

These shorts make you think, make you ponder, make you actually wonder, what is it that I fear most? Not really scary but worth a watch for those who have a romantic heart. 6 out of 10 is my vote.

Great animation, decent stories, and terrible presentation

[Polaris_DiB · 5/10 · 1 February 2009]

The trailer to this movie was very enticing--gorgeous black and white animation, sort of in the style of "Renaissance", promising Gothic horror from famous graphic artists; in this, the movie certainly doesn't disappoint. Fans of horror, animation, or film noir will definitely get their fill of high-contrast, deep-shadowed, psychological hijinks and darkened imagination. Too bad the presentation itself kind of sucks.

First of all, they cut back and forth through the different shorts, for no real good reason I think except that they didn't want it to seem like just a presentation of shorts, but wanted to make the work as a whole thread together. The barbaric Frankenstein's monster that results loses a lot of its tension and beat. There are some truly horrifying moments, and the stories themselves are engaging and fun, but for the fact that they cut back and forth between them, effectively deflating a lot of the carefully built drama.

Secondly, some idiot decided for the American release to transcribe the subtitles in white lettering. Whereas white lettering works great for classics of black and white cinema wherein most of the frame is variants of GRAY, in a movie made almost entirely out of half white, half black frames, only half of the subtitles can actually be read. Thankfully I know a smattering of French and was able to basically get the gist of most of it. I cannot say as much for the rest of the people in the theatre, as indicated by their grumbling. Fire whomever planned out those subtitles; I now eagerly await a DVD that comes with an English dub so that I can get the rest of what I missed.

Ironically in that vein, it turns out that the quality of the shorts included is pretty much directly proportional to the amount of dialog or voice-over narration contained. The absolute best short came at the end, and was silent except for sound effects. It used brilliant negative space to create a claustrophobic terror unmatched by the rest of the shorts. The worst short was this weird sort of rectilinear Rorschach test where this woman recites a shopping list of contemporary existential fears: "I'm afraid of being bourgeois. I'm afraid of being a democrat. I'm afraid of eating too much." YUP. Definitely will keep ME awake at night. I'm just sayin'.

All in all, I feel the potential for a perfectly good cinematic experience was let down by some overthinking in editing and underthinking of actual presentation. It is redeemed mostly by the singular strengths of the shorts individually, and those moments in the movie where shadows flitted tantalizingly across the screen.

--PolarisDiB

Some great animations here.

[punishmentpark · 8/10 · 13 April 2015]

The first time I tried this, I gave up after the first sequence; the animations were disappointing (read: somewhat rigid), as was the story. But, in all honesty, there was a lack of focus on my side. Out of the two recurring themes I liked the ones with the dogs best.

Years later I gave it another try, and with good results. The recurring theme with the neurotic thoughts of a French housewife with abstract animations worked just fine as an intermezzo, and the first sequence was actually very doable - rigid animations can have their charm and the story was 'fun' enough. The same goes for the second sequence (the legend of the Samurai); fun animations with some particular highlights.

But then, the 'second half': sequence three (the crocodile) and four (man imprisoned in a house) were nothing short of captivating on account of the astounding animations, especially those in sequence three. The stories of these sequences were certainly doable, but for all parts I can say that they weren't the most important ingredients.

A good 8 out of 10, and one I would want to see again sometime soon.

An Anthology Of Animated Short Horror Stories.

[meddlecore · 7/10 · 15 October 2020]

Peur(s) Du Noir (Fear(s) Of The Dark) is an anthology of short animated horror films, from a series of directors, in a variety of different styles.

Some are broken up, and act as transitions, while others are more episodic in nature.

But most are in black and white...and revolve around the themes of dreams vs reality and the torture of nightmares.

In the first main story, a curious introvert finds an oddly humanoid looking insect, that he takes home to study.

However, it escapes...and disappears.

He eventually goes off to college, and it seems to have tagged along with him.

Because, when he gets a girlfriend...she wakes up with an odd gash on her arm.

As her personality starts to change...it becomes evident the creature has infiltrated her body.

She becomes more and more masculine...and much more dominant.

And soon enough...he's become the experiment...

The second film, takes place in Japan.

A young girl immigrates to a new town, and a new school, where she is systematically bullied by a group of her cruel classmates.

They subject her to all manner of tortures, both mental and physical...until she goes mad.

Or, is the truth, really, that she is being tortured in an asylum, by a cruel doctor, who manipulates her dreams into nightmares?

Either way...these experiences become her reality.

And it all ends in suicide...or, is it murder...?

In the third film, we watch as a boy from the great plains witnesses a series of attacks and disappearances from the sidelines.

His best friend provides the narration, until he too disappears.

But was he the next victim, or the culprit all along?

Some dark actor in the guise of a human child?

In the end, a witch hunt leads to the death of an alligator...and it becomes venerated, like a saint...to keep the evil away...

The fourth, and final, episode has us following a man (who looks Russian) as he comes home to a dark house, only to get drunk and pass out, while reading a book.

His recent experiences are reiterated in his onsetting dreamstate, where he watches a lost love slice his neck from behind...as if he were an apparition, witnessing his own death.

When he awakens, he burns the book and photograph that haunt his dreams.

But he can't escape his own thoughts.

So he investigates the house further, to check if there is an ominous ne'er-do-well lying in wait to kill him as he sleeps.

Now, his paranoia is getting the best of him in the form of pareidolia.

And it becomes obvious that he is the greatest danger to himself.

The transitionary shorts include a film about an evil old miser who is walking a pack of vicious dogs, which he let's loose to torture unsuspecting townsfolk; and an abstract film about what happens when you let your fears and anxieties take hold of your identity.

I quite enjoyed this, as the animation styles are diverse and all around excellent.

With some great storytelling to boot.

7 out of 10.

A stylish but empty animated anthology.

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 6 May 2015]

Macabre anthology Fear(s) Of The Dark showcases the animated work of several international designers, comic book artists, and illustrators, all working within the confines of a black-and-white palette.

The first tale, instantly recognisable as the work of celebrated illustrator Charles Burns, tells of an introverted young man who overcomes his shyness to romance classmate Laura, only for his new girlfriend to become host to a freaky mantis-like insect that alters her personality. Burns' unmistakable bold graphic style is brought to life with the use of 3D computer animation.

Next up is Marie Caillou's anime-style ghost story that sees a young Japanese girl repeatedly sedated so that she can finish a freaky dream in which she is menaced by the spirit of a samurai and several Yōkai monsters.

Story number three, by Lorenzo Mattottifrom, revolves around a small French town that is plagued by a mysterious man-eating creature which lurks in the marshes.

Richard McGuire makes excellent use of high contrast light and shadows for the final chapter, which features a traveller seeking refuge from a blizzard in an abandoned house where he is haunted by the ghosts of the previous occupant.

As a fan of bizarre movies, comic art, anthologies and animation, I was quite excited to see this weird little film, but other than demonstrating an interesting range of creative styles and techniques, I wasn't particularly impressed: the wholly unrelated segments are atmospheric but lack narrative cohesion, a severe case of style over substance. A framing narrative, in which a creepy man unleashes his vicious hounds on a series of unfortunate innocent victims has no bearing at all on the tales it bookends, while a pretentious narrator who philosophises between tales as abstract shapes morph before our eyes only serves to bore and irritate.

The black and white art is great, the stories considerably less so since they echo any number of short horror tales from TV, radio, movie or books

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 4 November 2008]

Multipart animated film from France that is probably high on the love list of Mike Mignola and Frank Miller since its very often all black screens with very little white. Another one from IFC Films that is a rather disappointing film on all but the artistic level. The stories are linked by a lord of some sort walking his dogs across a landscape and setting one loose on a person periodically. This leads into an abstract animated piece with narration which then leads into the stories. The first story is from Charles Burns and it plays like a Charles Burns story, with a guy finding a weird bug that gets loose as he is picked up by a possessive girl.Another story is a manga or anime like tale of a little girl who is being tormented. The third is about a a monster on the loose and the final one concerns a man who breaks into a house.(I think I missed a very short one, but frankly its no loss). None of the stories are really scary or creepy (Maybe the Burns piece is the best because of the unease of the interpersonal relationships.) Worse they are all the sort of tales that we've seen before, mores so if you love short horror fiction be it books, TV films or radio. What works here is the art which at times seems more like fine etchings or story illustrations come to life. it beautiful stuff (the exception being the Charles Burns stuff which looks like everything he's ever done). Worth a look only if you like animation as art, and even then I'd wait for a rental.(I had such high hopes)

Along came a viewer, who sat down in the theatre, and this film blew him away

[TheLastPersonStanding · 7 March 2009]

"Fear(s) of the Dark" is amazing, with its intriguing visuals and stories. It ranks as one of the greatest non-Disney animated films I've ever seen, like "Persepolis" and "Grave of the Fireflies". I'm also fond of the theme music. It's as memorable as (dare I say) the theme from "Psycho".

The film is an anthology of six horror-like stories; two of them briefly play in-between the other four, as if to sort of introduce you to what you're about to see. One of the intros takes place sometime in the 17th or 18th century, with a mysterious villain walking around with ferocious dogs on leashes. Four of them, just like the stories. With this story's grim animation, and a somewhat disturbing ending, it's perhaps my favourite out of all the stories. Blutch, the animator, also gave the villain an evil face that's hard to forget.

I won't write much about the four stories, themselves, but in keeping with the dark atmosphere of the film, they're about demonic possessions, outcasts, death, and exploring the unknown. Each has a different style of animation, and whilst it looks fairly simplistic, overall, it's still enjoyable to watch.

Even though the film is not about making the viewer jump out of their seat with scares, I have to say there were a couple of times where I felt like it. That rarely happens to me when I watch other obvious horror films in recent memory, like "Quarantine" or "My Bloody Valentine 3D". (No bashing involved.)

If there's one complaint I have about "Fear(s) of the Dark", it's that the English subtitles are white, on a black and white film! Wouldn't it be common sense to have them with black outlines, so they don't blend in when the screen is white? I *was* able to make out most of the dialogue, but it was still annoying. Be warned, on that part.

Actually, another little complaint is that a couple of stories could've been longer, because they didn't feel like they were finished. The film's running time is only 85 minutes, so why not? Well, maybe I'm expecting too much from the filmmakers. I dunno.

"Fear(s) of the Dark" is a near-masterpiece. For an anthology film, it didn't feel uneven. The stories all flowed nicely together. If the subtitles are fixed for the DVD, then it's a keeper.

Shorts good, as a whole ... not so good!

[kosmasp · 3/10 · 29 September 2008]

Sometimes when I write comments, especially when I stray away from the overall or say average voting, I know people will automatically "not like" my comment or find it useful. Still as in this case, I'll explain my rating to those who care to read.

We have a few really good animated short movies here (each with a different visual style/theme). If I had watched them as standalone stories, I would have rated them much higher. Or at least without the intermission animated story, which didn't have anything to do with any of the stories (apart from the fact that it was animated and could be categorized as horror, if you want to). But even the intermission shorts (which isn't even surprising, you can see where it's headed, which is boring and annoying at the same time), are not even close to achieve the status an intermission voice has.

A female speaker speaks ... well french (duh), but again adds nothing much to the stories we are watching. Even more disturbing, it seems this voice-over is plain preposterous and pseudo philosophical. It drifts into conversations you might have with yourself in front of the mirror or when you are alone, but never want anyone else to hear say them (especially if you don't even have those "akward" conversations with yourself). This voice(-over) alone deserves a 1/10, but since the shorts are very good (and deserve the 7/10 rating the overall movie has), I settled for a 3/10

Prepare to Fall Asleep in the Dark

[jtfriday2000 · 1/10 · 23 July 2012]

Jacques (the other poster who gave this a 1-star rating) is right. There is no entertainment value in this film whatsoever. When I get into horror fiction, I don't need to see a blonde girl screaming her head off as she runs from some monster. What I look for in a good horror story is unsettling atmosphere and good characterization. I got neither in this film anthology.

Look at the reviews for this film on the IMDb boards and they call this film "nauseatingly pretentious" and "artsy-fartsy". That's true. If you don't like pretentious or art-house films then do not waste your time with this anthology. The pacing in all these segments are slow. I don't think any of them are more than 15 minutes total but each felt three times longer.

Too many times I watched these segments and was literally and figuratively left in the dark. I'd wonder, "What just happened?", skip back to see, and still would be lost. The stories lack any pull that entrances the viewer and makes him want to see more. I fell asleep during all 4 times I watched this movie. No lie.

The makers of this movie forgot fear is an irrational emotion brought on by our own prejudices. As a result, we must emphasize emotionally with the characters and the situation they are in to be scared. But they tried to intellectualize fear--and did it in a way that came off as a tedious waste of time.

I cannot recommend this movie to anyone, even art-house fans. This movie is a waste of time unless you desperately need something to cure insomnia. Just so you know, this movie is in black and white, but subtitled in white, which made it difficult to read at times. That did not bother me. It's just the plodding pacing, lack of characterizations, and inconclusive endings that bothered me.

Interesting!

[Sylviastel · 21 September 2011]

This compilation of short animated films in one movie begins with the narrator stating their deepest fears from a various places. Shot mostly in black and white with animation, the film can be dark, funny, evil, and thought-provoking at times but it lacks connection to the relations with the other short films. While I enjoyed the college student's romance with a troubled college girl, I wanted to find out more. Then there is the girl afraid of the samurai in Japan. The boy whose friends and uncle go missing and a crocodile in the mix. I don't have a favorite at the moment. They all seem to be both chilling, dark, and even light at times. I do find this film interesting for the most part. The six different directors and their visions of fear taking over is quite a unique premise but there are some issues regarding translation and connecting them all together like a giant puzzle that hurts the film.

Dora the Explorer for the horror buff.

[Jacques98 · 2/10 · 28 April 2009]

I grew up on horror anthologies. Be it a book of horror short stories, or be it TV series like The Twilight Zone—I loved, and still love, good horror anthologies. When I heard about Fear(s) of the Dark, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't very intrigued. Mainly because horror anthologies, lately, have been totally worthless. Where originality and truly weirdly captivating ideas used to be, now horror anthologies are just filled with genre clichés. But I gave Fear(s) of the Dark a try anyway. As negative as I am about the entertainment industry, I still have a blind faith that someone, anyone other than myself and a select few of my favorite authors/directors, can come up with an original and captivating story. And I had my faith crushed.

Fear(s) of the Dark starts out fine. Not great, but fine. The first segment, which entails a semi-unique story of a man and his bug problems, isn't amazing by any means, but it's by far the best you get from Fear(s) of the Dark. After that decent segment, there is absolutely nothing else worth watching. The other five stories are all either painfully clichéd, or they're done in such a way that they're so utterly boring, they're nearly impossible to watch. Some of them, such as the one about the alligator, are just pointless. They're equivalent of someone verbally telling you the plot outline of a Dora the Explorer episode: yes, technically, they're defined as a story, but in reality they're not. There's no significance.

Speaking of Dora the Explorer, another major problem with this anthology is the unabashed lack of maturity. Just like in every cliché horror movie, there's severed heads and boobs in Fear(s) of the Dark, but there is NOTHING mature about the stories behind the "mature" images. Everything about the stories are simplistic and juvenile. It's become a pop fad with generic "dark" fantasy authors/directors like Neil Gaiman and Guillermo del Toro to take a child's fairy tale and reimaging them for grown-ups. But what these writers—and I am in no way limiting this statement to the two I mentioned above—fail to realize is, adding violence and some heavy themes done not make a child's story mature. The best example of this is the new film Watchmen, which reminded me of an episode of The Wiggles with a few spurts of generic blood-spray. I honestly felt like I was watching a little kid's movie. Heavy themes and "graphic" images don't make something mature. What makes something mature is the nature in which the story is told. If you were to cut someone's arm off in real life, the nature is brutal and sick. If you cut someone's arm off in a movie, the nature is generally taken as fun PG-13 gore. The motives are what makes something mature. And fantasy writers don't understand that. The writers of Fear(s) of the Dark understand it even less. And it shows.

The art is pretty decent, I guess. I didn't see anything too amazing about it, but it certainly wasn't bad. It's no better or worse than you'd see in your average graphic novel. I'm sure these artists could do better, but I'm not going to complain about it. What I am going to complain about, though, is the subtitles. The version I got had yellow subtitles, and I could read every word fine, but there's the problem: reading takes away from the movie A LOT. I love a lot of foreign films, so using subtitles is my second nature, and I've never once complained about subtitles in any of the foreign films I've seen. But with Fear(s) of the Dark, the movie forces you to be reading when you should be concentrating on the artwork. At least five times, I had to rewind and re-watch a scene because I was reading the subtitles and a major plot point happened on screen, and I missed it totally. This becomes very annoying very fast. A few times, I thought I might as well just turn the movie off because the effort it took to concentrate on the art and on the subtitles at the same time was not nearly worth the payoff. Another problem with the execution of the film is the pathetic starving-artist monologues between each segment. Well, let me take that back: Another problem with the execution of the film is the pathetic execution in general, highlighted by the pathetic starving-artist monologues between each segment.

And finally, we get to the blatant lack of entertainment value. This is by far THE least interesting animated film I have ever watched in my life. I fell asleep and had to rewind nearly ten times. It came to the point where I literally had to stand up and walk around just to stay awake for the ending of the film. There is no excuse for a movie, any movie, to be this utterly boring. The reasons it's boring is because, (1), the lack of originality, thus the lack of captivation, and, (2), because the artists focus so much on their average artwork, that the storytelling is oftentimes put on second burner, or just forgotten about completely.

I could be frilly and come up with a creative way to end this review, but I'm not going to. I'm going to put as much effort in this concussion as the artists put into this film: Fear(s) of the Dark is bad. Don't watch it.

(Do I sound like a kindergartener when I put my final opinion in that shallow of a statement? So do the artists when they put their art in this shallow of a movie.) 2/10

Will someone someone please shut that woman up!

[Bill357 · 5/10 · 21 March 2009]

The stories and the animation were mildly interesting, but it could have used some color. The awfully drab browns and grays with, occasional tinting, began to depress me after awhile.

The really (and I mean REALLY) bad parts were the segments between the stories with that horrible woman squawking like a really annoying buzzard, over those idiotic moving shapes. Every time her rotten voice hit our ears everyone (all six people) in the theater groaned. Nobody cares about her stupid European elitist fears. She should be more afraid of her head and body becoming two separate entities sometime in the future than whether or not she's becoming more "right-wing".

It made me want to stand up and shake my fist at the moving rectangles and scream, "Shut up you loudmouthed b---h!!" She ruined the movie.

I've read what others are saying about the white subtitles, but I really I really have much trouble reading them. However that obnoxious woman made me wish I was illiterate.

White on White Subtitles? What Were These Idiots Thinking?

[RichardSRussell-1 · 1/10 · 7 February 2009]

For a long while, we could count on a Tournee of Animation every year; then it was Spike & Mike; then there were a couple of years of Animation Celebration; but it's been awhile since there was an animation anthology until The Animation Show 4 hit town last year. (No idea about Shows 1-3.) These collections almost always get a 5 rating from me, because the multiple installments are of wildly varying quality (some gems, some stinkers), and they usually average out to mediocre.

Here's the exception, a French import done entirely in B&W, with a collection of dark (and in some cases grisly) short features of remarkably poor drawing quality. The last of these is almost entirely black screen, with occasional half-seen glimpses of strange things fitfully illuminated by candlelight. This would be the ideal background on which to project the all- white subtitles, but no, it's almost entirely silent as well as dark. For the rest of the movie, the all-white subtitles are projected on a background which is itself all white at least half the time. Result: total incomprehensibility.

I got the distinct impression from the parts of the film that I could dope out that I wouldn't have liked it very much anyway. The subtitles were the killer touch. What could the idiot distributors have been thinking of?