Review of The ABCs of Death (2013) by Dan T — 08 Feb 2013

The ABCs of Death.

The ABCs of Death is a horror anthology in 26 parts by 26 different directors. Most of these directors are very well known while others have more of a cult following.

Some of my favorite directors included here are:

- Xavier Gens who did The Divide and Frontiers.

- Ti West who did House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, Cabin Fever 2 and a segment in V/H/S.

- Jason Eisener who did Hobo with a Shotgun.

- Jon Schnepp who directed Metalocolypse.

- Banjong Pisanthanakun who did Shutter and Alone.

- Yoshihiro Nishimura who did Tokyo Gore Police.

On top of this awesome list we also get a good chunk of lesser known directors:

- Yudai Yamaguchi who did Battlefield Baseball and Yakuza Weapon.

- Marcel Sarmiento who did Dead Girl.

- Sr?an Spasojevi? who did A Serbian Film.

- Jake West who did Doghouse.

This is a dream come true to me. Bringing in 26 awesome directors to create a film of pure violence and death. Unfortunately the film disappoints on almost every level.

After each short, they show the word and the director who created the short from this word.

The directors had complete freedom to do what ever they wanted to do. Rape, violence and nudity were encouraged. The directors could do anything they pleased, so what happened?

For a title like "ABCs of Death" I expected, well, a lot of death. That's where the film, surprisingly, disappointed on. A little over half of the shorts had someone actually getting killed.

The Japanese directors went all out to completely blow us away. These shorts are so strange, and hilarious, that they don't fit the title of the film at all.

One of the shorts: F for Fart, was beyond trippy and made no sense but I found myself dying from laughter. It's about a girl who does not want to go out into the nuclear gas outside so decides the best idea would be to smell her friends constant stream of farts. This would then lead into her getting absorbed into the girls anus to live for all of eternity. Who in their right mind would find this scary? Well, a different type of scary! This magical director also did Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead!

The weird part is that this particular short followed two really amazing ones. One called DogFight(by the director of Dead Girl), which is a crazy awesome slow motion extravaganza with some really unique editing. It's about a fight between a dog and a man with a couple of cool twists. I don't know how some of the effects were done but they looks incredible. The next one was Exterminate, which actually followed a spider and how it tormented a man in his house. I thought this was kind of interesting because we all kind get creeped out by spiders. We see one on the wall and it magically vanishes. Where did it go? Is it watching me?

It just feels weird that after these two extremely clever ones and the freaky three shorts before it, the movie takes such a significant change in tone. It went from super serious to super hilarious fart action. This shift in tone I wouldn't mind so much if the film wasn't blatantly advertised as a horror movie.

Most of the shorts are hit or miss. Ti West's for example, who is one of the best modern horror directors, created one of the worst in the set.

The directors could have done whatever they wanted to. They had complete freedom! Why were most of the shorts so bad?

I do envy this risky film-making however. You don't see many people trying something new nowadays. The movie can be extremely disturbing at times and is almost always extremely violent. Xavier Gens' short XXL was incredibly violent and messed up.

There were also quite a few shorts that involved the killing of animals. I'm sure PETA would be all over this if they found out.

Out of all the negative things I've said, I still enjoyed it for what it was. While some shorts sucked, a good chunk of them were awesome and clever. I also found myself trying to guess which word the short is based after and which director it was. I was expecting far more then the movie delivered. With so much talent behind the camera and complete freedom to do anything they wanted, it should have turned out better. It is definitely worth a watch for its uniqueness and may strike up some conversations but it wont blow you away in any respect.