The ABCs of Death Review

Movie: The ABCs of Death
By: Maniac E
Date: February 3, 2013

26 Directors, 26 Ways to Die

The ABCs of Death is a new anthology compilation which has some major director names in it. In this piece there are 26 short stories which are done in a A to Z way each director got his/her own letter. But will they hold up to one another? Or will this be a straight up anthology mess? Let's find out.

As for the stories, each hold their own and I will not go into all the 26 stories. The stories get a letter of the alphabet and go like D is for Dogfight, T is for Toilet, X is for XXL etc. Sometimes the names of the shorts are very literally as you can imagine with T. Some of them are out to shock the viewer with its graphical content some just want to be silly and weird. All the stories combined didn't give an epic all over story which could have worked as the red thread throughout the whole anthology.

First off, I really liked that each director could do what he/she felt like doing. There were no barriers holding their creativity in. Also the concept of all the letters is great and helps it stand out of the crowd. The people behind this anthology had balls and I can only applaud them for doing this. And don't forget the directors only got 5000 dollars to make their short movie and considering this is well produced. But it isn't all fun and gore here, there are some great stories in the bag but there are way too many that are nothing more than mediocre.

While some are just top notch, the others aren't and those drag the anthology down way down for me. You could say that 26 stories was a bit too much and you even see some overlapping shorts with the same stories. Most of the time the grotesque things will make sure you will stay seated but some of the Japanese things were just goofy and not all that fun to watch. Don't forget that the anthology has some major name likes: Ti West (House of the Devil), Jason Eisner (Hobo With a Shotgun), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Machine Girl) and Adam Wingard (V/H/S) and a lot more! This also did make my expectations rise and I wanted to get as much good stuff as the names would suggest.

In the end it just didn't do that and I wonder if the directors couldn't be bothered with some of the stories or sometimes they were just to weird in a bad way. Again not all are bad the Japanese things can get an A+ for most weirdness in a movie. But as far as gore goes you got some awesome stuff happening here, next to the weird and the insane ones you got some with decent back stories and 18+ ratings to go with it.

What I admire is the courage Drafthouse Films had with this project and while it is flawed it also possesses some excellent work. And make sure you watch this Anthology maybe just for the letter X and L, they will make it worth watching. Go watch it and be your own judge on it I myself found it lacking overall coherence and it is just only a mash up of short movies. I would like to see some more from some of the directors. So hopefully this will get a second chance.