The ABCs of Death

The mere concept alone inevitably churned out a messy, incoherent hodgepodge of the mediocre, the terrible, and the downright strange. Half the segments are shoehorned into their respective letter with an ambiguous, or downright insincere title. But the crux of the problem is that no segment could have been fleshed out enough to shine when it has to share its time with two dozen others, and a vast majority hardly even warranted the time they were actually granted.

Awful, banal, crap, ... xylophone, yeesh, ZERO.

26 letters in the alphabet. At least some of them are fun, but the format is just too scattershot.

Quality all over the place, ranging from mediocre to nearly unwatchable.

It's a bit hard to review a 26-part anthology with only enough space for 20 characters per short, so I'll say that overall this was carried by a few very strong pieces, either hilarious (F, J, K, N, Q), socially affecting (I, P, X) or decently arty (G) but was otherwise dragged down by some absolutely atrocious dreck (L, W, Y). As could be expected, the tone is wildly inconsistent which at times hurt my enjoyment of certain shorts given the start contrasts, but other times enhanced it.

Couldn't even finish this piece of shit.

This is the shittiest thing I've seen in a good while. It's got two better segments that I liked, which were Dogfight and Vagitus, but everything else was just boring or trying to be way too edgy for its own good. Everything else was horrible and pointless. It's all about doing things for shock value while having none. As an idea (different directors, different segments) it's good, but the potential is totally wasted here.

I didn't really mind this movie. The idea itself is kind of cool, but It was just okay.

With 26 different directors, it's obviously going to be very hit-or-miss. But I definitely have to applaud the premise, and would strongly recommend the movie under the condition that you watch it with a friend (or several). Watching with others is a blast, as you guess what the next word is going to be, and make all kinds of predictions, and run through all kinds of reactions, positive and negative. The segments really run the gamut from idiocy to brilliance in so many ways.

There were a couple of good shorts in here, but most of them range from boring to god awful to downright disgusting. I'd say just watch D is for Dogfight (which is the best short I've seen from either of these movies), then skip this and go straight to the sequel.

10 minutes of decency are unable to make up for excruciating boredom.

I'll take death and rebirth by cosmic fart over symbolic atomic nazi furry force fucking any day of the week. I never thought those were choices I'd have to make, but such is life.

Not what I expected. If I had been told it was some kind of Japanese freak show, then I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Whilst the concept of the film is great, there are only a handful of truly great quality shorts available. Ultimately most are less than phenomonal and many are less than average entirely.

In 1960 PSYCHO pushed the boundaries of mainstream US cinema by showing someone flushing a toilet. And in 2012 this film pushed back the edges by having a whole series of very short films also showing various toilet-related things. Also some other things. And crazy-but-not-very-interesting Japanese wackiness. Including, in the end, nuclear energy and WWII themes. Well, 'themes', anyway.

It's an interesting concept, but overall a mixed bag with more bad than good. Most of it ends up feeling completely amateur whilst others seem like they're more worthy as full films than short snippets. Ranges from bad (M and W) to pretty damn interesting (D, L, Z). Would definitely watch a "sequel", but I hope that there's more effort put into the shorts next time around.

Traumatizing. Thought provoking. Twisted. Prepare yourself to watch it and maybe ask someone to hold you afterwards over a cute romantic comedy of something. Not for the faint of heart, this will take you down a dark road. If you're not ready for something this dark, steer clear of this movie.

Almost impossible to give a numerical rating to a compendium of 26 films which ranged from atrocious to sublime. Yet I have attempted a rating nevertheless.

It's 26 short films so it's pretty hard to rate. Some were really good, some weren't. But it's fun and it goes by fast.

0_o What...?

Not a huge misfire, but a misfire nonetheless. Some are fantastic (D, R, W, Z) some are worthless and forgettable (A, C, G, V) and others are offensively awful (B, E, K, M). Some directors I didn't care about thoroughly surprised me (Sarmiento, Gens.) Others that I was excited for let me down (Forzani/Cattet, ESPECIALLY West. I've never seen someone care less about a project.) Very pleased to see Spasojevic isn't a one trick pony and has more up his sleeve than just shocks.

crap

Pretty interesting to look at the horror genre from an international perspective. The Japanese entry's confirm that nation has conceptual tourettes spread across a liberal foundation. Was disappointed with the self-aware route taken by a couple of submissions & the lack of dialogue throughout.

A couple of diamonds amongst the rough, but finding them was tiresome.

the idea is brilliant and it should be way more fun, but most of the shorts leave you wanting more and at times leave you confused. full marks for the idea though which just didnt pay off, which left me frustrated.

Worth it for the awesome H segment.

I have to give them credit for originality, bringing 26 different short films together in less than 2 hours makes for a wild viewing experience. The problem is that there's some amazing shorts (D,I,R,Y) some good (B,C,J,M,P,Q,T) a lot of so-so shorts and some that are just trash (F,G,H,O,Z). The amazing ones are worth the price of admission alone and other people might find gems of their own. Problem is there'll be some you can't stand and some you love.

With a collection of shorts like this, you expect it to be all over the place but this really takes it to extremes, swaying wildly from the ridiculous and hilarious to some of the most messed up things I've seen in a film. Worth watching just for the level of bizarre randomness of some of the videos.

Most of these shorts were lame, especially G and M. Hugely disappointed with the outcome as I had high hopes based on the trailer.

Tiresome and tedious collage of various degrees of ugly grotesquerie is doomed from the start: even at north of 2 hours, each letter gets barely 4 minutes to build and climax, leaving most of the segments as scattershot and half-formed narratives leading to unpleasant money-shots. Saving the best for last, XXL has an amusingly ironic and ghoulish punchline, and WTF? works because of its throwing the rules of coherency right out of the window, but it's an otherwise dreary slog.

way too many edgelords in the lots

This just might be the worst anthology I've ever seen. Every single short was bad and this thing was way too fucking long. Holy Shit.

These movies are probably the most unique bad movie experiences I've ever had. Going from funny to gruesome to surreal, with nothing but a title card separating these tones. Frequently alternating between good and the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Quite the experience.

The ABCs of Death has a good premise but gets the execution wrong. There are some interesting shorts like B, D, X and others, others are so bad they become funny and others are unfortunately bad like not the rest, but others. And the two hours running time doesn't help it either. A disappointing film for fan of anthology films like me, though it grows on me over time.

Bests are : A, C, D, I, L, R, T, U, V Worsts are : E, F, G, M, Q, W, Y, Z

Z 26 nowelek podobaly mi się zaledwie trzy - te przypisane literom D, X i Y - pozostale slabe, przecietne, kilka niezlych. Za malo horroru.

"Tellingly, this horror anthology's finest entries convey how real horror comes in more than shades of red, and how it lives inside us all." - Ed Gonzalez

It's only fair to rate each film and then take an average. A - 72, B - 45, C - 40, D - 65, E - 30, F - 12, G - 25, H - 18, I - 40, J - 35, K - 42, L - 70, M - 10, N - 73, O - 58, P - 21, Q - 71, R - 57, S - 50, T - 61, U - 51, V - 60, W - 12, X - 75, Y - 49, Z - 20. That averages to 45, a pretty shit movie overall. The premise is inspired, but too bad the majority of the directors submitted piss poor entries. Ti West's is especially disappointing.

Short review is not enough so let's take a look at every short here: [Full review]