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While simulated spooky fare in movies may get a big
boost from devilishly applied special effects, animated
horror has the advantage of the unlimited possibilities
of moving closer to the imaginary terrors that reside inside
our heads. And Fear(s) Of The Dark, an international collection
of six stories by ten animation artists, digs deep into
the scariest recesses of the mind, but with mixed results.***
The somber vignettes are connected by several intertwining
narrative threads that course through the other stories,
but more with their own internal logic than any contributing
clarity or impact on the production as a whole. One is quite
an effective historically metaphorical macabre Blutch creation,
featuring what seems like a French Revolutionary era aristocrat
walking a pack of unruly attack dogs, which he gleefully
lets loose on the common people one by one.***
The other is Pierre Di Sciullo's abstract twirling
graphic collage accompanied by a female voiceover, and addressing
more psychological but no less troubling torments in the
real world in present times, including fear of mankind,
of war, and political fears, not to mention the dread of
one's assigned identity as 'unredeemingly bourgeois' and
its connection to 'being scared of never being useful.'
That personal dread as absence defined in terms of the negative,
and the emptiness of existence, is an intriguing addition
to the notion of deep-seated human horror.***
While some of the vignettes are far more whimsical
than scary when not merely stagnant in nature, the more
conventionally crafted tale by Charles Burns stands out
as most chilling, both for its eerie and taut storytelling,
and the fact that the ill-fated protagonist is voiced by
actor Guillaume Depardieu, the young son of French screen
legend Gerard Depardieu, who in a real life horror that
casts a shadow of its own over this production, died suddenly
and tragically last year, succumbing to pneumonia. ***
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Final Words:
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Depardieu is the solemn voice of a withdrawn young
French college student, who in a highly creepy twist of
fate, is imprisoned by a pet insect he kept in a bottle
as a child, and who takes power over his now human plaything,
through the persona of a suspiciously far too horny college
coed.***
Guillaume Depardieu, RIP.
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