Director: Various

Cast: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Iván González, Kyra Zagorsky

Synopsis: A 26-chapter anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty.

The problem with anthology movies is that they generally lack the consistency of tone commonly found in movies with just one tale to tell.   The ABCs of Death magnifies this flaw to an insane degree by commissioning no less than 26 short horror movies with the common theme of death.   Almost every technique and horror trope is explored here, from an eccentric tale of killer farts to a Claymation tale of a killer toilet.   As you’d expect, the quality of the shorts is variable, although most of them are found wanting, with only a few diamonds in the rough.   Probably the best — and most harrowing — is Xavier Gens’ ‘X is for XL’, the pitiful tale of an overweight bulimic who goes to extreme lengths to acquire the kind of skeletal figure pushed by fashion posters as the height of beauty.  ‘D is for Dogfight’ by Marcel Sarmiento is a highly stylised and kinetic tale that comes dangerously close to resembling some kind of trendy, edgy sportswearad.   Andrew Traucki’s effective (but misunderstood) POV suicide movie ‘G is for Gravity’ is also worth a look, as is Jake West’s ‘S is for Speed’ but other than these, the ABCs of Death struggles to demonstrate the quality necessary for this kind of movie to prove successful.

(Reviewed 14th October 2014)