The ABCs of Death (2012)

The ABCs of Death (R) - Review

"W is for Wildly Uneven"

The movie starts with text proclaiming that 26 different directors from around the world created a short 5-6 minute film for each letter of the alphabet for a budget of $5,000 each.  They were free to write, produce and edit their shorts as they pleased, resulting in a film sold by its Producers and trailers as an Horror anthology that mostly disappoints (and sometimes embarrasses).  Only a few attempted something resembling horror, most were scatological, sexually deviant or had an absurdist humor slant.  Those that excelled are few and far between:  a man bare knuckle boxing a dog with great music and editing in mostly slo motion, a school janitor haunted by the children he's abused and the deer he's hunted, a claymation about a boy scared of the toilet, a sick sex-torture contest to the death, a man committing seppuku, a woman's blunt attack on her bed ridden husband.  For every 1 hit there are 2 absolute misses, ranging from ignorantly shallow to pretentious (or dangerously lazy to overambitious).  The rest are mediocre eye rollers (or in the case of the Japanese submissions, head scratchers), it feels as if most directors took the $5k and just made whatever pet project they wanted to and completely disregarded the Death theme or the horror genre.  However if you've ever seen a Sick and Twisted film festival (Spike and Mike we miss you), you'll know better what to expect and perhaps enjoy the post-movie conversations about which ones you liked or not and why.  The rest of you, expect a cycle of Snore, snore, shock, snore, gasp, repeat.  YMMV.

4.5 Dog Fight Club Could be an Feature Length Film out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)