Fear(s) of the Dark (Peur(s) du Noir)
'Fear(s) of the Dark" works the exact opposite end of the horror spectrum from a film like "Saw V." Instead of hyperreal live-action gore, this French short-story anthology delivers unsettling animated nightmares, light on explicitness and long on hard-to-shake creepiness. It makes a nicely grim little Halloween appetizer, although you may want to go home and hide under the bed afterward.
Written and directed by a group of American and European graphic artists, "Fear(s)" is a product of the French design studio Prima Linea; the black-and-white images are so cutting edge, you could bleed. First up is a dank tale of insect fear from Charles Burns, a long-established master of macabre alt-comix. The stark, jagged shadowing and free-floating planes of animation create an appropriately awkward atmosphere for this story of a nerdish young man (voiced by the late Guillaume Depardieu) who falls in love with a woman with entomological desires.
Marie Caillou goes the Japanimation route for a short story about a schoolgirl taunted by schoolmates and haunted by a dead samurai; it's the bloodiest of the segments yet still dreadfully tasteful. Lorenzo Mattotti's anecdotal folk tale about a beast rampaging through the countryside is gorgeous to behold with its stylized charcoal cross-hatching but a little unsurprising in narrative impact.
"Fear(s)" reserves its sucker punch for last: a simple old-dark-house scenario given unnerving staying power by Richard Maguire's visual genius. Using broad fields of black across which bolts of white unfurl to tell a story of a burly traveler stranded in an empty mansion - maybe he's alone, maybe he's not - Maguire creates a minimalist masterpiece that hinges on sources of light and horrible things briefly glimpsed.
Two series of shorts glue the longer segments together. One, set in the 18th century and following a vile old man and his vicious dogs on a long, sanguine walk, pays off with welcome violence; the artist is Christian Hincker. The other vignettes match Pierre di Sciullo's beguiling black-and-white abstractions - Rorschachs unmoored in time - with actress Nicole Garcia's increasingly dull recitative of bourgeois fears. These latter deftly prove the point of "Fear(s) of the Dark": It's what can't be said that's often scariest of all.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.
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