Synopsis: It has been hailed as the most visually stunning and unsettling anthology in modern animation history: Artistic director Etienne Robial brings together six of the world’s leading comic and graphic artists – Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Richard McGuire, Pierre di Sciullo and Lorenzo Mattotti – to each create a black and white journey straight into the realm of fright. This is their stark and naked world of phobias, nightmares and shadows, of strange noises, slimy bugs and dead things. It’s a creepy, kinky, sometimes funny and always scary ride inside what makes our skin crawl and keeps us awake all night. The lights are off. The fear is real. Do you dare watch it alone?
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Peur(s) du noir 7.5

‘Peur(s) du noir’ is a French, episodic black and white animated film that, as the pretentious title suggests, claims to be a spooooooky film. However, aside from the tone of the film, which is greatly helped by artwork that sometimes looks quite like charcoal drawings, it isn’t genuinely scary; the stories are sometimes too abstract to be effective and some are simply too simple-minded to trigger seasoned adults.

But it is nonetheless an interesting film from an artistic standpoint – both in the visual arts sense but also in the type of film that the various directors attempted to construct together. In my estimation, it may not have achieved its desired result, but it still is an interesting piece of work for both indie film and/or animation enthusiasts. As for horror buffs, I’d probably suggest looking elsewhere for a fright night…