Fears Of The Dark: Review

Although a great deal of movies completely fell short of being entertaining this year. There were pockets of brilliance this year. Even stranger would be a great deal of great features this year were of the animated persuasion. The larger more mainstream titles this year: Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda were great even for there kid and family friendly-ness. As far as independent movies there were plenty this year, but most notably would be the graphic novel adaptation of Persepolis. Though it was nominated last year, it came out this year with a moderate amount of buzz.

Fears of The Dark follows in similar steps as Persepolis. Where we have a movie with incredibly capable animators and storytellers, but with their varied backgrounds you can't help but think will a work like this be cohesive?

 Sup?

In short...not really. This isn't a bad thing, but a glaring sore of an otherwise above-average piece of work. What is most impressive about the film [besides Richard McGuire's end piece], would be the technique used by all of the animators; in conjunction with their style of story telling. Blutch clearly conveying all of his stories of 'fear' in an animated abstract manner, but the voice over during said animation is very literal.

Recommending this movie would be difficult. On one hand, the storytelling in each individual story is very uneven. For a foreign movie, especially a French movie, there are certain conventions someone who gravitates to American storytelling would have to buy in to. Though most of the stories have a great 'Edgar Allan Poe-esque' build some, maybe even half leave the viewer jarred or unsatisfied with such open-ended endings.

 

There are moments of sheer brilliance. Richard McGuire story of a man who looks to have stumbled [broke into] a cabin in the middle of a blizzard and seeing this person figure out that the last [or current] occupant(s) weren't the most stable...mentally. This story is worth the time and effort to see if this movie is playing near you.

The sum of its parts doesn't amount to the grandest animated foreign feature this year [that belongs to Persepolis], but the truly dark elements of this feature will keep you watching. The fantasy-horror executed in a japanese animated technique will have one of the better build ups of the film, but again in the end...it leaves the viewer hallow. The one that really seems to not fit, but one of my favorite manners of animation would be the chopped up story of a man and his rabid dogs. Throughout the movie you will see this sadistic man release his hounds in 4 different scenarios, I found his face during this really graphic attacks to be the most intriguing.

There is a science fiction-horror story that really wasn't worth much except of the style of animation. If anything all I'd have to say to the writer would be...I'm sorry she broke your heart man. At the same end, there is a story of an man-eating creature that could or could not be an alligator, by the end of the story [after the twist] you probably won't care. The sound design and direction is at its peak in this particular tale, but other than that and the wonders you can do with charcoal...pretty vapid.

 I give this movie...

A Large Amount Of Used Crayons