The 23 worst things you’ll see all week: ABCs of Death

Posted by on February 5, 2013 in Movies

ruffhousing

ABCs of Death, a wretched horror anthology in which 26 directors around the world were each given a letter of the alphabet to use as the basis for a short film, captures what it’s like to be a fan of horror movies: lots and lots of dreck, some of it gross, much of it inept, almost all of it forgettable. Yet buried underneath it all, you might find a rare gem. Are the three gems in ABCs of Death worth the 23 other shorts you have to sit through?

It won’t be easy. These shorts range from tedious to dull to flat-out “what the hell were you thinking, Ti West, because now you’ve made me like House of the Devil a little less?” They imply a Japanese preoccupation with farting and jacking off, as well as other countries’ directors expressing their fascination with turds and furries.

But the reasons to persevere are D for Dogfight, Q for Quack, and P for Pressure. Marcel Sarmiento, the director of the uneven but interesting Deadgirl, directs the sleekly hilarious and beautifully textured Dogfight, which is literally about a dogfight. The centerpiece of this live action short is a really awesome dog performance. Adam Wingard, the director of A Horrible Way to Die and the framing device for horror anthology V/H/S, seems fully aware of the futility of doing anything meaningful with five minutes and a random letter of the alphabet, particularly when his letter is Q. Both Dogfight and Quack realize that a good option for a horror short is a touch of black humor.

But then there’s Simon Rumley’s Pressure, which is hands down the best thing in this anthology, partly for how it plays with its title (few of these directors seemed to give a damn about their assigned letter, much less whatever word they came up with), but mostly for how it’s actually a horrific short about a character instead of just a hurried concept. Pressure makes the point that horrible things aren’t always only horrible things. This should come as no surprise if you’ve seen Red White & Blue, Rumley’s masterpiece revenge story, arranged in a heartbreaking lattice of confessionals, cross-motivations, and character reveals (Red White & Blue is available in Netflix’s instant view catalog and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who can handle Jacobean excess). Pressure is exactly what I would expect the director of Red White & Blue to deliver.

ABCs of Death is available on video on demand services. Watch it here to support Quarter to Three.

  • Michael Barnes

    Ti West is definitely on his way to one hit wonderdom. House of the Devil was so good, Innkeepers so bad. All the short stuff he’s done hasn’t been up to HotD quality at all.
    As much as I love horror movies (the good ones), I really have a strong dislike of shorts or anthologies other than all of the great English ones (Dead of Night, all of the Amicus ones). For some reason, the English do that kind of thing right. Nobody else does.
    Apart from Bava. Black Sabbath is still one of the best in class.

  • Barac Wiley

    Just a quick point – if you’re going to link to Netflix, please link to the movie page and not the actual streaming link. I’m typically looking to add a recommendation to my queue, not watch it that very second.

  • tomchick

    No, watch it now! This instant! That’s what it’s called INSTANT VIEW!

    I hope I haven’t steered anyone wrong with Red White & Blue. It really is, in my mind, a masterpiece. Amanda Fuller and especially Noah Taylor just knock me out in that movie.

  • tomchick

    I think I’m too much into modern horror to appreciate those English classics, or even the Italians you obviously love (your “Fulci wept” comment under the Warm Bodies podcast was aces!). That said, the segment in Black Sabbath with the nurse tending to the old gypsy lady’s corpse is absolutely timeless. I wish I was raising kids so I could carefully calculate at what age I would most freak them out by showing them that short!

    I’m not going to write off Ti West just yet. House of the Devil and Trigger Man are good enough to compensate for the half-assed stunt he pulled in ABCs of Death (spoiler: it’s a miscarriage joke). And I need to track down Roost, his first movie, in case that has any of Trigger Man’s atmosphere.