Monday 25 February 2013

The ABCs of Death

"The ABCs of Death" (2012, Nacho Vigalondo, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, Marcel Sarmiento, Angela Bettis, Noboru Iguchi, Andrew Traucki, Thomas Malling, Jorge Michel Grau, Yûdai Yamaguchi, Anders Morgenthaler, Timo Tjahjanto, Ti West, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Bruno Forzani, Héléne Cattet, Simon Rumley, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Srdjan Spasojevic, Jake West, Lee Hardcastle, Ben Wheatley, Kaare Andrews, Jon Schnepp, Xavier Gens, Jason Eisener, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Drafthouse Films, Magnet Releasing).

"The ABCs of Death" is a 26-short anthology film, featuring a mini-film each from the above directors (or directive pair in some cases) based around one of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The film is 2hrs long-ish, and to be fair, it doesn't feel anywhere near this long as each short runs quickly onto the next in succession. It is, however, riddled with terrible mini-films which sadly overshadow some of the few really excellent shorts in the collection.

The film starts with a high point or two, but it's a severely mixed bag, and by the end I was glad to see the credits.

Some of the inspirational shorts are creative, violent, spooky, different and could be progressed easily into a full scale film. Some of the good, but maybe more average shorts are pretty standard and could really be thrown in with the likes seen in the latter day "Creepshow" films. Unfortunately there are also a majority of uninspired shorts which verge on the depraved (and not in the good way) and often jump the line into the simply stupid category. As much as the film moves quickly past these short little efforts, they unfortunately stick more in my mind than some of the good attempts.

Lots of toilet humour (although the claymation short was hilarious!), murders, vampires, paedophiles, animals, boobs and randomness. Some good, some terrible. The peaks certainly jump whole-heartedly into the troughs, but a cinematic experience to be had, for sure! Guaranteed you haven't seen anything like this before!

[Image: Drafthouse Films]

Hani

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