Quartile rating: 5/10 · 1 rating
An ambitious anthology film featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film. Inspired by children's educational ABC books, the film comprises 26 individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free reign in choosing a word to create a story involving death.
The ABCs of Death is a wildly uneven anthology horror film with 26 segments of drastically varying quality. The concept itself is novel and ambitious — assigning each director a letter of the alphabet to craft a death-themed short — but the execution is deeply inconsistent. Plot is nearly nonexistent as a cohesive whole; individual segments range from clever to incomprehensible to juvenile shock value. Acting varies enormously across segments, with most being passable at best. Cinematography similarly ranges widely, with a few visually striking entries but many that feel cheap or rushed. The ending (Z segment) lands with a deliberately absurd note that feels more anticlimactic than satisfying. Novelty is the standout quality — the sheer scope of the anthology concept and the international range of directors gives it a singular, if messy, identity in horror.