Beautifully Animated Dark Forgets the Fear
I haven’t the first clue as to what I should say about the animated French anthology Fear(s) of the Dark, not a single solitary one. It is absolutely unclassifiable. More, it is probably absolutely unreviewable, this collection of shorts by ten of the world’s most cutting-edge, acclaimed graphic artists as unique, one-of-a-kind and completely indescribable as anything I’ve ever come across.
A face to scare you with in IFC Films' Fear(s) of the Dark
Basically, the movie is a (mostly) black and white foray into the everyday things that haunt our nightmares. Angry dogs barking madly barely held at bay by a straining leash, the site of a hypodermic needle inching closer and closer, the feeling of all-ecompassing dread as if you’re not alone inside the house, unexplainable noises cascading through a darkened hallway.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, the artists doing their best to dive as far inside our universal phobias as humanly possible. The thing is, maybe something got lost in translation but, by and large, watching them play out in Persepolis-like animation isn’t even close to being scary. Heck, it’s not even unsettling, and by the time it was over all I could really do was scratch my forehead and let out a rather perplexed, “Huh?” before turning off the light and calling it a night.
Don’t get me wrong, the film certainly looks beautiful. The animators (Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Romain Slocombe, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, Blutch, Lorenzo Mattotti, Jerry Kramsky, Pierre di Sciullo and artistic director Etienne Robial) have crafted an eye-popping menagerie of ghoulish grotesqueries that’s certainly original. More, it’s never remotely boring, each short so unique and eye-popping I couldn’t help but be at least a wee bit curious as to what the group of them was going to unleash next.
Like all anthologies some bits work better than others, but even the ones (the finale set in an old dilapidated house out in the middle of nowhere is actually kind of chilling) that do connect still never achieve the level of suspense or terror I kept hoping for. I just don’t know if I get what the point of it all is; it’s all too esoteric and aloof to connect on anything close to a visceral lever. In fact, the whole thing is more impressive from a technical and artistic standpoint than it is from anything else, and if Fear(s) of the Dark was trying to scare me sad to say the only thing unsettling is that someone thought it was a good idea to make it into a motion picture in the first place.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Fear(s) of the Dark Theatrical Trailer
