Fear(s) of the Dark (available now from Metrodome distribution) is not the most original title for a horror presentation as being scared of the dark is something most people can relate too; whether you had just watched the exorcist and now lay scared shitless in your bedroom, or were munching on a kebab at 4am and had lost the way home. Yes the darkness is something which seems to harbour a deep natural fear. Without sight our mind departs from planet rational and enters dumb ass mode whereby the slightest rustle of branches in a dark countryside lane is not wind movement but a masked four armed psychopath who is about to rip your legs off and batter you to death with them. Thankfully the piece is not as graphic as this and for all intents and purposes could hardly be described as being of the horror genre.

The film is based around four short, stories by an array of international directors: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire. They are seemingly unrelated but for their weird and intriguing subject matter and style of animation. The first, a kind of retelling of Kafka’s classic absurdist text The Metamorphosis, centres around a young man who loses an insect specimen and believes it lives in his bed. Skip to many years later and he finally manages to get a girl (its hard, trust me I’ve tried), she becomes infected by the bug and starts behaving weird, after a while she turns into a bug/human and they have a family of bugs who keep him trapped in the bed. I swear I am not on acid.

The other stories are still engaging and intriguing but having finished the only thing I’m scared of is having to get up in five hours time and whether I have any clean pants. This may be missing the point though, the rational behind the piece is in focusing on its physical presentation; the use of graphic designs to create a claustrophobic and dark world. The tile reference is not in the subject matter per se but more to the style of animation used. This is a grainy and dank world, in which the blending of black and white into subtle, fantastic looking images that, in their simplicity, convey the fear of being trapped, chased or possessed. While this ink block style is impressive to look at there does seem to be a large amount of pretension behind many of the ideas (there are a lot of French directors involved), from the soliloquies espousing a hatred of western culture and other random blurbs to the scary old man who intersperses each scene by letting one of his dogs off the leash to kill. Is the old man a metaphor for death? Does each piece focus on the nature and personal expression of fear and allow us to delve into the metaphors and imagery used to find meaning? Or is it just a load of random scenes showing off the animation styles?

I think it would be unfair to simply label the film in the latter camp. It is an art film so there are likely to be pretensions behind it and these can be readily accepted if you view the piece with an open mind. Generally there is a great deal to enjoy in the short stories themselves which reflect much on the personal and introspective nature of fear and how this can be found in every day dreams, memories and situations.

Words > John Clarke