Fear(s) of the Dark (2008)

That was an excellent one.

Just perfect...

Don't listen to the negative reviews

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

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.

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.

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. 8/10The 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 7/10I 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 7/10Marie 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. 6/10If 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) 5/10Overall score: an impressive 8/10 (bumped up from 7 thanks to Mcguire)