Written & Directed by various artists
After a generation long
drought the horror anthology has mounted a comeback that started a
couple years ago with with the new Halloween staple Trick 'r Treat.
This past week marked the U.S. debut of the year's third highly
anticipated horror anthology (after V/H/S and The Theater Bizarre)
with Drafthouse Film's ambitious ABC's of Death.
“Ambitious”
might be too small a word to describe the scope of this project.
Consisting of a celluloid busting twenty-six shorts, each director
was assigned a letter of the alphabet and the task to create a film
based on that letter. ABC's courted some of the brightest
young talents in horror for contributions including Ben Wheatley,
Jason Eisner and Adam Wingard among them.
Before
screening the film, executive producer Tim League apologized to the
packed crowd as what they were screening was an earlier cut of the
film. The finished product had been left behind at the previous
week's TIFF. While what we saw was a fair approximation of the final
product some of the titles had been changed and reorganized. Rather
than give you an inaccurate review a work print version, I'll leave
you with an overall impression.
ABC's
results in a mixed bag as a viewing experience. Heading into the
film just know that there's no way you're going to enjoy all twenty
six shorts and cross your fingers that you'll get more good than bad.
The rigid nature of the premise means the flow feels disjointed.
Shorts that play for comedy give way to splatter fests that give way
to more serious minded fare (one short deals with the alarmingly high
number of women murdered in Mexico, and while its a very effective
piece of work, it's a massive tonal departure for the remainder of
the film. There's an international flair to the film which works in
some cases (Penumbra's Adrian Garcia's Bogliano's children's bedtime
story packs a fun wallop) I found myself once again baffled by the
wacky for the sake of being wacky nature of the Japanese
contributions. Their special brand of nonsense threatened to cause my
eyeballs to explode with sheer disbelief and frustration.
Also, if you're a fan of
toilet or poop humor, ABC's of Death is
going to be your jam with a pair of animated shorts (including the
fan contest winner stop motion film) that are in the upper echelon of
the bunch. Jason Eisner provides a short music video that could have
been a side story set in Scum Town and the Adam Wingard/Simon Barrett
contribution had me hoping the pair develops a web series featuring
the duo getting into shenanigans each week. A segment featuring
dogfighting manages turns out to be one of the most cheer worthy of
the bunch.
The
biggest disappointment comes from Ti West with his lazy, tossed off
segment. I enjoy West's features, but he needs to avoid short films
as he's 0 for 2 this year (his V/H/S segment is the weakest of the
bunch by far). Also, watching him toss tee shirts into the crowd
confirmed that he throws like a stupid weak baby.
ABC's of Death definitely
benefits from a rowdy, pumped up crowd (prior to the screening the
Alamo had patrons shotgun a beer in order to get in the mood). Trying
to sit through this many wide ranging shorts that run the gamut in
terms of quality may prove to be an impossible task, especially given
the number of distractions within arm's reach. The reaction to this
film may well mirror that of V/H/S
where folks who had the benefit of a theatrical screening found it
fun but flawed where the video-on-demand crowd found the effort
disappointing.
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