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Sunday, February 3, 2013

[5.00/10] The ABCs of Death (2013)



Brief review: Shown at a numerous festivals last year, but officially set to be released in 2013, "The ABCs of Death" is a horror anthology, that consists of 26 shorts, each helmed by a different director, each of whom assigned a letter of the alphabet. "Apocalypse" is over-the-top gory fun. "Bigfoot" ain't about Bigfoot, and doesn't work. "Cycle" is confusing, but cool and well-conceived. Stylishly-shot in slow-mo, "Dogfight" is a man vs. dog fight, you have never seen before. "Exterminate" is badly-acted, and plain dumb. "Fart" stinks... literally. "Gravity" is overly short, and way too simple. "Hyrdo-Electric Diffusion" is Nazi torture fun, it's as simple as that. "Ingrown" is well-shot, intense, and one of the best segments, along with "Dogfight". "Jidai-geki" is a joke. "Klutz" is animation about crap, but it ain't crap at all. "Libido" is nasty and sick, yet genius. "Miscarriage" is uninteresting and simply unnecessary. "Nuptials" is hilarious, while the following "Orgasm" is artistically-shot, yet ultimately boring. "Pressure" is well-made and lives up to its title. "Quack" tries hard to be original, but falls short instead. "Removed" is gore-fueled, and nicely-executed. The best thing about "Speed" is that it ends quickly. The animated "Toilet" is superbly-crafted, gory, and somewhat shocking. "Unearthed" is pointless piece of sh*t. "Vagitus" is refreshing, but looks cheap. "WTF" is WTF, indeed. "XXL" is sheer brilliance. "Youngbuck" is sick, bloody, and stupid, and the closing "Zetsumetsu" is just a crazy Asian softcore porn.

Overall summary: Conceptually-genius, yet overambitious, "The ABCs of Death" has some strong and memorable segments, as well as some terrible ones, hence the end result is a mixed bag of utter lunacy, twisted imagination, ludicrousness, lots of gore and very few scares.

14 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Safe to say the A to Z Blogging Challenge sounds much better!

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Alex, it does. And trust me, it's certainly better than this misfire.

Alex Jowski said...

I've been wanting to see this movie out of curiosity because most of what I've heard is "You won't believe just how bad more than half this movie is."

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Alex, what you've heard is completely true. There 3 or 4 segments that really stand out. At list 5 or 6 that are completely awful, and the rest of them are so-so You do the math. :)

Kaijinu said...

26 shorts? 26 deaths? Throw me in this one and I'll be one mother of all judge jury possible executioner~!

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Kaijinu, it's not as good as it sounds, trust me.

Unknown said...

Hi hon! Been a while, I know and I'm sorry. Still got my computer problems, but I figured I'd stop by.

This definitely sounds like Net Flix rental for me.

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

It's okay, sweetheart. No worries.
Yeah, I had high expectations about this one, but it turned out pretty mediocre. At least most of it.

Kaijinu said...

you sure it's not all that fun? That one with the furries looked kinda good...not to mention T for Toilet!

well, if I'm able to endure and gave V/H/S a high rating, I think i can survive this one!...I hope.

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Kaijinu, I personally thought VHS was better than this one.
I had a love/hate relationship with it, because the good segments were really good, but very few, and the bad were many...and pretty terrible.
Toilet rules!:)

HorrO said...

You are getting to far ahead of me! Another one I haven't seen yet. Looking forward to this one even if I will probably feel the same way as you. I'm just interested to see what they come up with. Another on point review!

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

HorrO, I don't think I'm way ahead of you, but thanks anyway, I'll take it as a compliment. :)
I was looking forward to see it as well, but it left bad taste in my mouth. There were far too many pointless segments in it.


Thanks, appreciate your never ending compliments. :)

Alex Jowski said...

So I finally had a chance to see this movie and I rather liked it. Some shorts work, some didn't but really I liked that this could serve as a sort of "sampler" of the modern horror genre, introducing me to some new directors and their various styles.

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Alex, it's a mixed bag for sure, but in the end it just didn't work as a whole to me. Way too random.