Fear(s) of the Dark

Fear(s) of the Dark (Peur(s) du noir, 2007) is a French black-and-white animated horror anthology you can watch online on iFILM. Six comic artists — Richard McGuire, Charles Burns, Blutch, Lorenzo Mattotti, Pierre Di Sciullo, and Marie Caillou — each direct a standalone segment, all circling the same territory: what the dark does to the human mind when it has a moment to work.

The segments don't share a story. They share a register. Sounds from an empty room. A figure that shouldn't be there. A dog leading someone through a night forest toward nothing good. Each director brings a distinct visual grammar — Burns' dense cross-hatching, Mattotti's loose, near-painterly strokes — but the atmosphere holds across all six: the dark is not empty.

The film screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, which is an unusual platform for feature animation. It earns the slot — black and white turns out to be exactly the right tool for this kind of dread. Stream Fear(s) of the Dark (2007) online on iFILM.