Peur(s) du noir

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.

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.

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.

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 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)