The horror anthology genre seems to be making a bit of a comeback. The latest example is The ABCs of Death, a film jam-packed with filmmakers — 26 of them, one for each letter of the alphabet – each of whom contribute short skits inspired by a word beginning with a letter of the alphabet. Thus we get “A is for Apocalypse” and “B is for Bigfoot,” and so. The results are scattered and uneven, but that’s not a knock. In fact, one of the reasons why the anthology format seems to work so well with horror films is that so often horror ideas can’t hold up to the demands of a full feature-length narrative storyline. In this film, we only need ideas that can hold up for three minutes or so. Some of them do, but when they don’t, you know you won’t have to suffer for too long.
With filmmakers hailing from around the globe, The ABCs of Death is not only a showcase a great variety of talent, but also a variety of approaches to telling visual stories. We get the more conventional tales: gory murders, spooky bedtime stories, and sick torture sequences. But the best segments in the film are the off-beat tales. British filmmaker Thomas Malling delivers the most robust and ridiculous segment with an odd battle between a dog-costumed fighter polite and a bosomed feline vixen who turns into a vicious Nazi torturer. Marcel Sarmiento’s “D is for Dogfight” owes much to Guy Richie in terms of style, but it is a well-executed and tense showdown (with a twist) between a boxer and a vicious dog. And “F is for Fart” is a surreal, fetish fantasy that will test your sense of humor with its bizarre, resulting and strangely sensitive story about a girl’s crush on her female teacher.
Often gross, vulgar, and stomach-churning, The ABCs of Death will definitely appeal to a niche, and probably young and male, audience — hence its suitable programing as a midnight feature. But for fans of the genre and those who are tired of the same old drab approaches to film that fill up the cinema’s primetime slots, The ABCs of Death definitely won’t bore.
