Brought to us by the celebrated French graphic house and studio Prima Linea, Fear(s) of the Dark is an omnibus anthology of horror themed animation from some of the industry’s premier graphic designers, artists, and comic book creators. Five self-contained stories spliced together and tied off by a recurring monologue, Fear(s) of the Dark challenged six creative minds to animate the rhythm of the fears in the harsh extremities of black and white and the tonal subtleties that lay in between.
Opening the picture is a charcoal horror from the mind of Blutch (a.k.a. Christian Hincker) where we witness the nighttime stroll of a gaunt 18th century aristocrat and his pack of slavering Hellhounds. Each encounter with a peasant sees a dog break free and devour the helpless individual, until finally the gentlemen finds himself alone, face to face with the final hound.
Charles Burns's computer animated paranoid delusion sees a sick man lying in a hospital bed employed as a metaphor for a bad relationship as he wistfully recalls an old flame. Solidly put together and possessing the clearest narrative of the bunch, his lucid recollections quickly devolve into fevered ravings of black ink despair as his first love/lover becomes his tormentor in the image of the insect he himself tormented. All narrated with a curious regretful whisper as he lies helpless awaiting his medicine.
From there we’re treated to the baseless, boundless cruelty of young children who simply know no better in Marie Caillou’s Asian flavored anime. Sickly grey in color but rich in expressive detail we witness the abject horror of a sleep clinic forcing children to sleep through their nightmares so that they might be cured. Serpent beasts, ghosts, bullies and an old Samurai legend are the order of the day. After all, the girl holding you down while they pour spiders down your dress might as well be a two-headed snake eating you alive for all the difference it makes at the time.
Lorenzo Mattotti comes next with a somewhat traditional pencil terror allegorizing fears of loss and death. A young boy recalls the dark, windswept summer that his uncle disappeared poaching. As broad lead strokes strip away the familiar into a haze of dark shadow a ravenous man-eating beast stalks its way through the fog, gobbling up his best friend. Long after the beast is caught the man stares out onto the moor, pondering the fate of those who met their end in the darkness.
Finally, Richard McGuire treats us to a remarkable haunted house odyssey composed entirely of high contrast pools of light and dark augmented with a man’s round face guided through a manor in pursuit of a woman with only the dim light of a candle to illuminate his path through the silence.
Each of these stories is intersected by Pierre di Sciullo’s two-dimensional geometric patterns and block play. Shapes and designs appear to ebb and flow with Nicole Garcia’s accompanying narration in which she breathlessly delivers a stream of consciousness assessment of everything that she fears; from being tortured to death to being unable to properly articulate the superiority of Western Culture to an Afghan villager watching American television.
DVD Bonus Features
Impressive extras include a gallery exhibit showcasing the animation in each of its key stages; conception/sketches, script, storyboard, animatics/animation, and post-production. Also present is an all-encompassing featurette that walks you through the conceptual development and early drafts of each individual segment virtually frame by frame in its entirety. The disc also contains public entries from the studio's MySpace contest in addition to both the teaser and the theatrical trailer.
"Fear(s) of the Dark" is on sale October 27, 2009 and is rated NR. Animation, Horror, Mystery. Directed by Blutch, Charles Burns, Lorenzo Mattotti, Marie Caillou, Pierre Disciullo, Richard McGuire. Written by Jerry Kramsky, Michel Pirus, Romain Slocombe, Blutch, Charles Burns, Pierre di Sciullo. Starring Nicole Garcia.
