Directed by: 26 different horror directors
Plot: 26 different different chapters about death each represented by a different letter of the alphabet
Review:
26 directors from all across the globe were tasked with making a segment out of a letter of the alphabet to be chained together in this horror anthology. Like I said last year with V/H/S, the horror genre loves an anthology, but anthologies are tough. It gets even tougher when they are made up of 26 different parts. The potential for bad apples ruining the bunch skyrockets, and The ABC’s of Death certainly suffers for it. Anthologies are even tougher to review, especially this one. There is so many individual stories to cover which aren’t that long to begin with. I’m going to try anyway.
At the risk of sounding racist, the Asian shorts were probably the worst. They were just so weird and over the top. For instance, “F is for Fart,” the worst story of all of them, revolves around a school girl seduced by her teacher’s farts. These farts come out in big cartoony yellow clouds. When the world itself decides to rip one, it poisons everyone, so the schoolgirl uses her teacher’s ass as a oxygen mask until she literally gets sucked into her teacher’s ass. So like I said, really REALLY weird. Most of the Asian ones followed in those footsteps. The only one that was kind of cool was “L for Libido.” It was like a more twisted and disgusting version of Eyes Wide Shut and came off (no pun intended) as pretty frightening.
There are definitely a few of them that are incredible pieces of work that everyone should take a look at. The movie is shown in alphabetical order so “A is for Apocalypse” starts us off with a short and sweet tale that has a great ending. It might be my favorite of all of them for having such a strong ending. “U is for Unearthed” and “D is for Dogfight” give it quite a run for its money. U is the kind of short I wish was feature length while D brings beautiful slow motion to so much violence. “Q is for Quack” was an awesome piece of meta that chronicle the actual making of the short. The same cannot be said for “W is for WTF” unfortunately. W put everything on the table and just fell short.
D is for Dogfight
“O is for Orgasm” was pretty surprising. It is in no way, shape, or form what I was expecting from this anthology. I just assumed that they would all be straight up horror movies. O is more of a hypnotizing slice of surreality. “S is for Speed” is also pretty surprising. It starts off like a cheesy Bitch Slap-style B-movie. I wasn’t really expecting much from it, but it has a gut punch of an ending. I also wasn’t really sure what to expect from “R is for Removed,” which comes to us from the director for A Serbian Film, one of the most twisted fucking movie I have ever seen (that F-bomb is necessary, it is that twisted). Regardless, he knocked it out of the park with a gruesome metaphoric look at the state of cinema. “T is for Toilet” is also pretty standout, if only because it is the only short that was made by an amatuer and voted onto the 26 films. It is claymation, but it is really cool.
The rate that these short flicks are good, decent, and bad are pretty equal. There are like 9 must sees and 10 waste of times. The good thing is they don’t last long so the bad ones never outstay their welcome.
Rating: 5/10
Recommendations: Last year’s V/H/S would work, but there is always Creepshow.
R is for Removed
