Upon seeing the trailer for this a short time ago I was very interested in seeing it. Based on the roughly two minute trailer all I knew of it was that it was all Black and White, all animation, and several different stories.
I put off watching it for a few days, not really in the mood for a French, B&W, animated horror short collection. When I did pop it in though I was instantly surprised and disturbed. The simple at times, and precise animation was more than enough to send chills down my spine. I will do my best to describe the basic stories. One involved an old English man walking his dogs, all large and near the point of foaming at the mouth, when he comes across people he will let one go and watch while laughing as it chases them down and eventually mauls them to death, women, children...all of it very funny to him. Another involved a young college age student who after angering a bug he caught when he was a child is on the receiving end. This is the one that to me had the least bit of explanation but I think the one that bothered me the most, for a few different reasons.
Another involved a young Japanese girl moving to a new town and living near where an infamous Samurai was buried after he was beheaded for killing some English people. She has to deal with the mean kids at school as well as ghosts, a possible possession, murder of her parents and eventually institutionalized where she is tormented by her doctors. Really sickening stuff. There's another story about a boy who sees people disappear in his community, because of some sort of monster. Finally a story about a man who seeks refuge in an abandoned house during a snow storm....oops, maybe its not abandoned.
Working with such coarse and drastic imagery as well as subject matter this collection of short horrors did more for me that a lot of feature length horrors that come out of Hollywood like so much bile. They traded in the conventional horrors and instead used simple mood and animation that left much to the imagination.
Some of the tales where cleanly drawn and rounded, while others were dirty and scratched up. Even things that shouldn't have been scary looked horrifying when drawn a certain way. Many parts of it lacked dialogue or even some sort of exposition or explanation of what was happening which was fine by me since it worked so well to upset me. I didn't really care about the stories, more just how they were making me feel.
The decision to stay black and white was a wise one, as well as keeping it animated, they did things with the pen that CGI, or make-up just couldn't do. It allowed the different animators to show exactly what was in their head instead of settling for finding somewhere in the real world that's close enough to what they wanted.
There was one thing that I didn't like about it, and it was something I think they should have cut out entirely and it was a voice over section that played in between the stories where a woman is describing her fears while geometric shapes fly around on screen. I saw no point to it and it broke up the tension created by each story and bored me. It was like a palette cleanser when you want to keep the taste in your mouth, not neutralize it.
Aside from that one complaint I thought this was a very "cool" film. It promised something and held up its end of the bargain. If you like horror with a certain twist, or "think outside the box" quality then this is a good addition to your list of films to watch. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for an old man with viscous dogs, and if I see them, run and don't look back. 8/10 stars.
Directors: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire.
No comments:
Post a Comment