Fear(s) of the Dark (2008)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Powerful

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

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.

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.

"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.

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