Movie Review – ‘THE ABC’s OF DEATH”

Anthology movies are bound to always be a mixed bag.  In fact, I can’t recall a single one that’s been 100% solid.  So now factor in that there are 26 different directors…what do you think the results will be?  You’re right, a real mess.  But that’s okay!  You are aware going in that not all of this will work!  A small fraction, really.  The idea was to assign a letter to a director and then have them choose a word…then to use that word and have it be a cause of death to which a short will be made for under $5,000.  It’s a concept I fell in love with immediately after I read about it, but then the day comes where I get to see it and reality sets it.  At just over 2 hours, it’s almost a chore to get through it.  There are, believe it or not, FIVE shorts involving poop and farts and yet only one of them is P or F.  Does this sound like something you might like?

It’s hard to talk about this collection because half of the fun is guessing what exactly the cause of death will be, which you find out along with the party responsible at the end of each segment.  Part of me wishes that this hadn’t gone in alphabetical order as the pacing could have been tweaked immensely.  Segments range from absolutely disgusting to horrific to hilarious to beautiful.  Some are short and to the point, others feel like they’re twice as long.  The highlights?

A: (by Nacho Vigalondo) is a fantastic start to set the tone for how off the wall the proceedings will be.

D: (by Marcel Sarmiento) concerns a vicious man vs dog battle which should leave PETA literally fetal and sobbing.  This is my favorite of the bunch, and is coincidentally the segment made available online some time ago.  I’m glad I opted to wait and see it in context, because it really gives you hope that there IS some substance  to be found within.

L: (by Timo Tjahjanto) will test your endurance; I thought it was hilarious and subversive, but I’m also the one person who was anxious to see A Serbian Film a second time.   They share some ideas, but this is its own beast.  Recently purchased his co-directed 2009 flick called Macabre and have high hopes.

Q: (by Adam Wingard) is perfect something really clever to come along.

T: (by Lee Hardcastle)  is  a close 2nd place for me, a crudely clay animated, hilarious bloodbath.  This was the winner of a fan submitted contest, and it got me to check out Hardcastle’s awesome YouTube channel.

So…I really dug 5 out of 26.  The rest was forgettable or awful.  Look, I think I’m one of the only people who liked all of 2012’s VHS, so perhaps I have different ideas of what to expect out of a short film collection than some.  At the very least VHS seemed like a unified idea and time and effort went into it.  By contrast, Ti West’s contribution to ABC’s looks like it was shot for about $10 and finished in a lunch hour.  This was an idea gone wild — there’s no control, there’s no theme, there’s just a letter of the alphabet, a director with something notable under their belt,  and imagination…or lack thereof.  It’s hard to give ABC’s of Death a  fair rating, let alone to recommend it to someone.  So fives across the board, I guess.  There was enough intriguing material that I’ll be checking it out again sometime soon to see if I was just in a bad mood for some of them.  Perhaps you should too.  This is as subjective a film as there can possibly be.