THE ABC’S OF DEATH

"26 filmmakers. 26 ways to die".

The brainchild of co-producers Ant Timpson and Drafthouse Films' Tim League, how could this NOT arouse the interest of any self-respecting horror fan? 26 short films, each one based on a different way of dying, all of which have been written and directed by some of the leading names in the field today. Talent involved includes KILL LIST’s Ben Wheatley, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL’s Ti West, FRONTIER(S)’s Xavier Gens, A SERBIAN FILM’s Srdjan Spasojevic … Wow.

It all begins with "Apocalypse", from TIMECRIMES director Nacho Vigalondo. A woman's disagreement with her bedridden husband is taken to extraordinarily violent lengths against an unexplained nihilistic backdrop. Vigalondo’s a great director and, as openers go, this has enough dark humour and grue to get fans onside.

Despite mixing folklore and the old adage of "sex equals murder", its follow-up "Bigfoot" is a disappointingly empty, inconsequential affair.

Angela Bettis, the actress of MAY and THE WOMAN fame, directs "Exterminate" which has fun with the concept of fear (in particular, arachnophobia). It’s trite but engaging while it lasts.

"Fart", from ROBO GEISHA’s Noburu Iguchi is a real puzzler. This ridiculous segment concerns a schoolgirl who develops a crush on her female teacher, and becomes obsessed with the notion of suffocating on the fumes of her farts. It’s as stupid as it sounds, complete with yellow CGI clouds posing as the deadly guffs.

Norwegian director Thomas Malling's offering, "Hydro-Electric Diffusion", is as bonkers as much of the music that hails these days from his homeland. It's also one of the more visually interesting propositions on offer, boasting a theatrical stage-bound delivery and characters dressed up in animal costumes.

"Ingrown" was nastier fare than I was expecting from Jorge Michel Grau, director of the relatively subdued WE ARE WHAT WE ARE. It's essentially torture porn, in a bathtub.

"Klutz", from Anders Morgenthaler, is a colourful cartoon about a woman chased around her home by her own turd. Really, it is.

Timo Tjahjanto's "Libido" vies against Ti West's "Miscarriage" in the tasteless stakes, the former providing a well-shot account of a man strapped to a chair and forced to participate in a contest designed to alert his sexual urges. Naked women are cavorted in front of him, and then an amputee who wanks with her prosthetic leg in a bid to arouse the man. At one point, a young boy is even raped in front of him. He wins the contest ultimately - but his prize is hardly one worth receiving...

"Orgasm" is blatantly the work of AMER's Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet. Just like their feature film it prefers to tell its story visually rather than through traditional narrative, and is filled with hyper-stylised images of sex and violence. It looks great, but it's all artifice: it's not really saying anything.

"Pressure" follows the travails of a black prostitute hustling to feed her kids. The lack of dialogue and raw handheld style are true to director Simon Rumley's ordinary style. It's cruel, well-made but ultimately forgettable - though the scene were a kitten is trampled to death may get people's backs up.

"Quack" comes courtesy of YOU’RE NEXT’s Adam Wingard, and is a misjudged attempt at comedy by way of self-reflective commentary which was quite painful to sit through. The best thing going for it is a nice pair of breasts. At least it’s brief.

Wheatley's "Unearthed" holds the distinction of being shot from the point of view of its vampiric victim as he's killed by a group of assailants. But, beyond that, there's nothing to take away from this unremarkable short.

And so on...

I really, really wanted to like this one. Not only because the idea on paper sounded very appealing – especially considering the talent that’s been roped in – but also because I have a lot of admiration for Monster Pictures. To be critical of one of their releases hurts me.

Alas, to be brutally honest, THE ABC’S OF DEATH is a crushing disappointment from beginning to end. It’s got decent production values, is frequently stunning on a visual level and has enough splatter to satiate the lust of even the most jaded gorehound. But the effect of 26 short (roughly 5 minutes each) films rattling off in quick succession is numbing to the extreme. For all its disparate styles and nasty set-pieces, THE ABC’S OF DEATH is mostly tedious.

Part of the problem is that there’s very little of value that can be said in 5 minutes. Thematically, the filmmakers here are all bound by the concept of choosing a letter from the alphabet and weaving a tale of death around a word that begins with said letter. There’s little more being explored in these shorts – as if there could be, given their time constraints. Characterisation, as you can probably guess, is nil. Whatever dialogue these vignettes manage to squeeze in (it’s literally being spat out in a hurry, in Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s "Bigfoot") holds no thread of tension or continuity. And, in most cases, the end result is a half-baked idea which offers no satisfying resolution. What, for example, is Andrew Trauki’s "Gravity" about? Answers on a postcard please, because all I could see was a pretty but pointless waste of time.

Jason Eisener’s "Youngbuck" is little more than a music promo video with a freakily ugly lead. Marcel Sarmiento’s "Dogfight" is choppily edited and artificially stylish: it had me thinking of AMORES PERROS, and wishing I was watching that instead.

Kaare Andrews' action-packed "Vagitus" does admittedly offer something you don’t see every day, by way of some unexpectedly proficient FX work; while Spasojevic doesn’t let fans of his confrontational goriness down. Speaking of which, Gens possibly takes top honours for the bloodletting in his surprising "XXL". But everything is so brief, so frantic, so devoid of context that the thrills simply don’t come. There’s no build-up to anything, no denouements, no storylines to house the stream-of-consciousness that makes up for the bulk of this tiresome 124-minute vanity project.

The whole concept is at fault here. I mean, what can these filmmakers do in a mere 5 minutes and with a budget of just $5,000.00 each, other than shock? And so, this is what they do … over and over again. Only, with no characters to empathise with the shocks are superficial in the extreme. Even the usually reliable West falters with his desperate "Miscarriage" entry.

Ironically, the most entertaining vignette on offer is "Toilet". It's a rough-around-the-edges claymation effort about a young boy who's afraid of using the bog, believing it to be a monster. Gory, funny in a distinctly British manner and wildly imaginative - the irony here is that its maker, Lee Hardcastle, won a competition to have his amateur short included in the film amongst the 25 more established filmmakers.

Perhaps if you were watching these shorts in isolation, a few of them could've been quite effective. But there's not one that stands out as being great, barring Hardcastle's fresh offering.

The film has nevertheless enjoyed a successful run of theatrical screenings across the UK, and is set to be released onto blu-ray and DVD by Monster Pictures in June.

Review by Stuart Willis