The ABCs of Death (2012)
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 57
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 35
As is often the case with anthology films, The ABCs of Horror is wildly uneven, with several legitimately scary entries and a bunch more that miss the mark.
Average Rating: 4.5/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 7
As is often the case with anthology films, The ABCs of Horror is wildly uneven, with several legitimately scary entries and a bunch more that miss the mark.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.6/5
User Ratings: 5,405
My Rating
Movie Info
Twenty-six directors. Twenty-six ways to die. The ABC's OF DEATH is perhaps the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived with productions spanning fifteen countries and featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film. Inspired by children's educational books, the motion picture is comprised of twenty-six individual chapters; each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free reign
Watch It Now
ADVERTISEMENT
All Critics (57) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (35)
Gives a sense of horror movie making learned by rote - at a boy's school where girls have been admitted under sufferance.
Top CriticMost are exercises in sickening bad taste, with an emphasis on human bodily functions.
At its best when merging shocks with social commentary, this halting compilation improves significantly as it nears the end of the alphabet.
An enormously impressive and massively indulgent cornucopia of 26 short films from all over the world.
It's a feast for fans of the genre and a guaranteed ordeal for everyone else.
There are just too many stories to fit into two hours - and even with fewer weak links, The ABCs of Death might have fallen short all the same.
...two hours of brutality, excrement and viscera. Yes, some segments disturb and repel, and many try for dark humor, but the squirms they induce are far from pleasurable.
Anthology movies are always hit and miss, but the average here seems a bit low.
Collectively they become rather tedious, not so much a satisfying meal as a platter (or splatter) of gores d'oeuvres.
With 26 short segments, it's expected that this horror anthology will be hit and miss. But the experiment is an intriguing one, as the producers gave 26 filmmakers a letter of the alphabet and complete artistic freedom.
Animal lovers will be particularly offended by some tales in this mind-numbing marathon.
It presents 26 disparate (read: in need of an editor) slices of dicing from 26 directors you've almost certainly never heard of (and indeed, the one you have - Ben Wheatley - feels tainted by association).
The fans will love. The faint-hearted won't.
Patchy but enjoyable, this is an excellent horror talent showcase that, if nothing else, feels like it offers value for money with the sheer number of shocks and splats it delivers.
The overall execution of the project never quite lives up to the concept, with too many of the films feeling lazy and poorly thought out.
An interesting idea, but with so many cooks involved, the broth isn't quite good enough.
It's an idea that sounds better in concept than in execution.
The quality of each segment varies widely.
A good concept yields scattershot results in this horror-film anthology.
The ABCs of Death is a repulsive and excessive excuse of blood-soaked entertainment that should make the horror fan in you squeal with delight.
Weighed down by some sub-par entries and lacking some great genre minds, this compilation overall pales in comparison to other recent anthologies.
Judging from their contributions, some of the filmmakers behind this 26-part anthology find death less fearsome than the thought of a cute girl farting.
An alphabetically-organized horror antology that's often unsettling but only sporadically rises above mediocrity and sometimes descends into absolute awfulness.
Short, sharp shockers about death in all its infinite variety, one for each letter of the alphabet.
The possibilities are delicious. The reality is absolutely vile.
Audience Reviews for The ABCs of Death
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Y for YES! | 10 days ago | 11 |
Latest News on The ABCs of Death
March 8, 2013:
Critics Consensus: Oz the Great and Powerful Looks Good But Lacks MagicThis week at the movies, we've got a wonderful wizard (Oz the Great and Powerful, starring James...
What's Hot On RT
Movies Directed by Tyler Perry
Blockbuster news and reviews
Ellen Page in an intriguing new thriller
A gallery of classic books on film
Featured on RT
- Total Recall: Movies Directed by Tyler Perry 44
- Parental Guidance: The Great Gatsby, Jack Reacher, and Safe Haven 6
- Video Interview: Aftershock Producer Eli Roth 3
- Ray Harryhausen: 1920-2013 33
- Digital Multiplex: Cloud Atlas, Pulp Fiction and more 4
- RT on DVD and Blu-Ray: Jack Reacher, Mama, and Upstream Color 34
- Box Office Guru Wrapup: Iron Man 3 Soars Above the Rest 64
Top Headlines
-
Baz Luhrmann Wants DiCaprio for Hamlet
1
-
Bryan Singer Shooting X-Men: Days of Future Past in 3D and Simul-Cam
0
-
Avatar Sequels Shooting in 2014
2
-
Shane Black Confirmed for Doc Savage
0
-
Warner Bros. Plans New Dungeons & Dragons Movie
5
-
Adam Scott in Talks for Hot Tub Time Machine 2
0
-
Summit Already Thinking About Divergent Sequel
2
Fresh Links
Featured
10 Best Movie Trilogies
Pretty self-explanatory here; HitFix offers up their favorite trilogies of all time.
10 Jilted Movie Grooms
Feeling a little sappy? Here are 10 movie grooms who were left at the altar.
Weirdest Movie Siblings
From Twins to The Royal Tenenbaums, Moviefone explores cinema's oddest siblings.
50 Youth-Gone-Wild Movies
TimeOut lists the best movies about youth and rebellion.
30 Greatest Rock & Roll Movie Moments
Rolling Stone boldly proclaims the rockin'-est moments in cinema.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
In my mind, going down as a tonally confused version of something out of the "Faces of Death" series, "The ABCs of Death" is a compilation of 26 short films, where the overall idea was to give 26 directors (from all over the world) each a letter of the alphabet and have them each make a short segment showcasing death using a theme which begins with their designated letter. But while we (the audience members) are lead to believe that each director has set out to work within the confines of their letter in order to bring forth something interesting, problems arise when it quickly becomes apparent how aggressively incoherent, aggressively disgusting (but not in a scary way) and just downright boring "The ABCs of Death" actually is.
Much of this movie is a mixture of segments which are visually well crafted, but far too conceptually strange, segments that are meant to be funny, but are far too conceptually strange and the segments which are downright gross, and while aren't as conceptually strange, are simply nonsensical. But maybe the biggest problem here is that most of these said segments aren't scary at all. Even those directors, who came forth with the intention to scare, showcase segments of death tamer than anything you could see in an episode of "1000 Ways to Die".
A Quick Heads Up: The best segment (by far) is entitled "Q is for Quack" by filmmaker Adam Wingard, who seems to be the only writer/director thinking outside of the box. But even though this is one of the funniest film shorts I've ever seen (I'm not kidding) what you have to wade through to get to it, is sadly not worth your time. Anyway, I'm sure you can find this segment on YouTube or somewhere else for free. The only other segment which rivals Wingard's film is entitled "X is for XXL", which is undoubtedly the most visually impressive and is in fact the scariest segment in this supposed horror movie.
Final Thought: Maybe I was naive to think that a movie entitled "The ABCs of Death" would be scary or even have a fraction of Twilight Zone-ish sensibility, but I would be shocked if said egregious lack of scares isn't the final nail in the coffin which distractingly kills off anything good about this film experiment, as an entire piece.
Written Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland
Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus