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Fear(s) of the Dark, a French amalgam of animated horror shorts (now with a limited stint in the states just in time for Halloween), is not an aggressively scary film—at least, not by today’s standards. It lacks the sadistic cruelty and boo-I-gotcha thrills of most of its modern brethren, but this six-part tale of beasts, bogeymen, and other abominations is unnerving nonetheless. Each vignettes preys on the less tangible fears that take root in the psyche; the kind that whisper to you in the otherworldly language of nightmares and phobias. It may not break any records for kick-you-in-the-nuts scares, but the results are often far more unsettling than all the tree-felling apparatuses and ocular hillocks the genre has to offer.

“Wait,” I can hear you muttering, “a subtitled horror cartoon? That’s not scary!” Let me explain: Fear(s) of the Dark is not a film for children, nor is it a taxing exercise in speed reading. Subtitles accompany the French dialogue, yes, but the script is clever and intriguing. In one short, an inkblot shakes and shimmies across the screen while a woman soliloquizes about the volatility of fear. These bits, which are chopped up as interludes and placed between the rest, have a rapid pace but are neither scary nor integral to the plot(s), and merely provide poetic bookends to supplement its themes. Reading rarely detracts from the film’s fright factor, such as it is.

But no excuses need be made for foreign-language films—if you abhor subtitles enough to avoid this film altogether, by all means, take your disgruntled anti-intellectual moaning elsewhere, presumably into a screening of Saw V. The topic of subtitles had to be broached, however, to explain why their use here is extraordinary. Fear(s) of the Dark refuses to fashion a crutch from the mechanics of dialogue; instead, it conveys its subject through artistry, nonlinearity, and symbolism.

Points two and three in that list are guided by the first: artistry. From the skeletal gait of an 18th century dandy and his tetralogy of attack dogs, all sketched in charcoal, to a silhouetted man exploring a haunted house in negative space, each short’s style is vibrant and unique despite a color palette that’s limited to black, white, and gray.

This graphical simplicity lets the symbolism shine. The dandy, for instance, holds the marauding hounds of horror at bay, but their rage bleeds off the screen, threatening to tear it and themselves apart. But then, one by one, the old man begins loosing them on innocent bystanders, at first seemingly by accident but with increasing purpose and malevolence. Finally, with one dog left, he lets go the leash and, dancing and laughing like a lunatic, is ripped to shreds himself. Fear draws no allegiances; no one is immune to its effects—even its keepers are defenseless.

And this is where Fear(s) of the Dark excels. The film excavates the darkest corners of the subconscious and relays its findings to us through an array of metaphors in grayscale. In fact, the film’s main flaw is that it’s slightly too cerebral, and the abstraction of its themes dulls the ferocity inherent to its subject. Fear(s) of the Dark is not for those moviegoers looking to leap from their seats with fright; it will, however, fascinate anyone willing to ponder this koan of the emotions, fear, and suffer a passing chill while comprehending the implications in its character.

-Scott Miller