Equal parts elegant and terrifying, Peur(s) du Noir is a collection of six animated, black-and-white horror movies produced by French people. You can taste the Frenchiness in the intermittent comedy segments, geometric blanc-et-noir kaleidoscopes with voice-overs about particularly Gallic terrors: "I'm scared of being uninformed about politics... I'm moving center-left." The rest is classic horror about power (an aristocrat with homicidal dogs), possession (an anime short about Japanese schoolchildren and bloody-minded ghosts), and infestation (a nasty bit by hometown hero Charles Burns about sex and bugs). How can something so scary be so beautiful? (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.) BRENDAN KILEY