Samenvattingen(1)
Twenty-six horror directors collaborate on an anthology film where each filmmaker directs a segment focusing on a death based on a letter in the alphabet. Among the directors involved are A SERBIAN FILM's Srdjan Spasojevic, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL's Ti West, and BLACK DEATH's Christopher Smith. Drafthouse Films and Timpson Films produce. (officiële tekst van distribiteur)
(meer)Recensie (3)
Massive disappointment. Very few truly good segments, mostly average and below par + something absolutely appalling here and there. The idea of bringing together renowned modern horror filmmakers from all over the world, assign them a letter of the alphabet and let them make a short with death as the theme is not bad. But the result is an incredibly unfocused mix of very inconsistent quality. The good ones are Y Is for Youngbuck by Jason Eisener, X Is for XXL by Xavier Gens, D Is for Dogfight by Marcelo Sarmiento, L is for Libido by Timo Tjahjanto, U Is for Unearthed by Ben Wheatley, and Q Is for Quack by Adam Wingard. So, 6 out 26, which is very little. There a few more that have something and are well made (I, O, T, H, R), but that I didn’t like, while the rest swings between boring, uninteresting average and unwatchable cringe (F!!!). And Ti West must have drunk the budget he had, because otherwise his half-minute long M Is for Miscarriage is impossible to explain.
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A-B-C-D... – so goes the nursery rhyme, but this bloody anthology film is definitely not for a young audience. The quality of the each story varies widely, from decent to utter garbage. I was most impressed by the letters S (Speed), K (Klutz) and T (Toilet). The worst, most embarrassing, or gratuitously gory stories were letters F (Fart), H (Hydro-electric Diffusion), and Z (Zetsumetsu). All in all, when I add it all up and scratched my head, it was a rather below average affair that I came to by sheer chance via a director whose short frankly disappointed me.
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The ABCs of Death is an interesting mosaic, but there is one big problem with it: There aren't many shots that really stand out. I don't think it's because the short form is inadequate, but rather because the creators wanted to play around and ended up with inventive but uninteresting pieces. Brutality is frequent here, which is dull and exaggerated, with very few good points to be found. As a showcase of different styles and approaches, it's interesting, but as a consistent work, it's incredibly weak.
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