The ABCs of Death is a 2012 American
anthology horror film
produced by Ant Timpson and Tim League. It contains 26 different
shorts, each by different directors spanning fifteen countries. It
premiered at the
2012 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2013, it was released on
VOD January 31 and in theaters March 8.
Plot
The film is divided into 26 individual chapters, each helmed by a
different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were
then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving
death. The varieties of death range from accidents to murders.
List of Segments
The shorts and their directors are:
[5]
A man is sitting in bed, eating a roll, when a woman sneaks into his
room and clumsily attempts to stab him with a knife. He struggles, but
she manages to stab his neck, cutting a large hole between his fingers
in the process. Leaving the knife stuck in his neck, she leaves the room
and returns with a frying pan, throwing hot oil and fries over his
face. She repeatedly beats him on the head with the pan. Calmly, she
sits down next to him and explains that it was not supposed to be this
way. She reveals that she has been poisoning him since last year and he
was supposed to have died already. His eyes move, indicating he is still
alive. He asks her why. She said she's been listening to the news all
morning and ran out of time. He closed his eyes and dies. She sits next
him and said, "I'm sorry, it was going to be better. But we don't have
time." The camera zooms into the large window beside the bed, with the
white curtains turning red.
- B: B is for Bigfoot
- Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
- Writer: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
A couple is about to have sex, when the man's young cousin, Xochitl,
also called Xo, interrupts them. She tells them that she can't sleep
since it's only eight. She claims her parents allow her to sleep until
ten. The man tells her to go back to her bedroom. He'll be with her in a
moment. After Xo leaves, he tells his date that his parents lent him
the house with this one condition: To look after Xo. The man goes to
Xo's room and orders her to sleep. When Xo refuses, he tells her that if
she doesn't sleep, the Abominable Snowman will come. She is undaunted
by this and says it doesn't snow in Mexico. His date appears and agrees
with Xo. She enters the room and tells Xo the tale of a vicious snowman
that kidnaps children, tears their hearts out, and eats them. She claims
the snowman was kept in a cold-storage container with one condition: he
was only allowed to go out at night and take children who don't lay
down at eight. They say the snowman rings a bell and wheels a cart where
he puts the children's bodies. The couple tells her she doesn't have to
sleep, but to lie on the bed and not come out. They put the covers over
her, ordering her to not make a sound, and to count sheep. After they
leave her bedroom, they have sex. Outside of the building, a man with a
scar on his face rings a bell, which frightens Xo. It is presumed that
the man outside is the garbage collector, signalling them to bring out
their garbage. The man looks up at the window and sees the couple having
sex. The man inside sees the empty trash can and realized that he
forgot to take out the trash. The trash collector is now outside of the
door, knocking for it. The man opens the door and hands him the trash
bag. A scream is heard. The camera zooms into Xo. Her bedroom door opens
to reveal her cousin's date, dead, with a large hole in her chest where
her heart should be. A scared Xo silently hides under the covers. The
scar-faced man is now inside of the house holding a bloody wheel-type
cutter. He walks into the bedroom but does not notice Xo. He leaves the
house with some trash bags and pushes his cart off. Xo is still under
the covers, counting sheep.
- C: C is for Cycle
- Director: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza
- Writer: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza
A man sees a puddle of blood on the ground outside of his home. He is
then shown sleeping on a bed with a woman. She hears a noise and wakes
him up to investigate. He goes out into the living room. Seeing nothing
suspicious he returns to the room. He wakes up on the bed and see that
the woman is gone. He goes outside and calls the woman's name, Alice. He
sees a hole in a thick bushes and walks toward it. He wakes up to find
himself on the ground and that it is night time. He goes into his house
and bedroom to find a man looking exactly like him sleeping on his bed
with Alice. Frighten, he runs out of the bedroom and hides. We hear the
woman's voice asking him to go investigate the noise outside as shown
earlier in the short. The man is confused when he sees himself doing
what he had did before. In the morning, he waits behind some woods to
see the other man to emerge and inspect the hole in the bush as he had
done earlier. He comes out to see that the other man disappeared. The
other man appears behind him, attempting to strangle him with a rubber
hose. The man struggles, but dies from the spiked wires coiled around
the hose. Covered in blood, the other man drags his body to the hole in
the bushes. The puddle of blood shown in the beginning of the short is
revealed to belong to the man.
In a soundless short, a tired and sweaty man is shown leaning against
a wire fence. He is wearing red boxing gloves, that another man is
taping down to him, and a dog tag that says "BUDDY, if found please call
Los Angeles Men's Shelter, (213) 555-4124". He looks behind him and
sees a man on the floor with a bloody and beaten face looking back at
him. He steps away from the fence to reveal a wall covered with flyers
for missing dogs. One in particular shows a picture of a lost dog name
Buddy. Written over the picture says, "LOST DOG, white mutt, friendly,
answers to Buddy." Underneath the picture is "if found please call Los
Angeles Men's..." Dirty men and women are shown in a circle soundlessly
screaming and waving money. The man goes in to the circle. The man that
was taping his gloves is yelling into his ear. Another man is shown,
holding a chain connecting to a dog. The dog looks at him menacingly.
Released from the chain, the dog attacks the man with the red gloves,
biting his arm. The crowd cheers. He pushes the dog away. When the dog
bites his leg, he bits the dog on the neck. The dog recovers and
continues to attack. The man fights back, punching the dog multiple
times. The man with ed gloves and the dog paused a moment and glances
nervously at the jeering crowd. The man with the red gloves attempts to
punch the dog when it jumps up but misses. Losing his footing he falls. A
half naked toddler is shown beside the man holding the chain. While he
is on the ground the dog bites the man on the neck. The man mouths the
word, "Buddy." The dog releases him and turned on its owner, the man
with the chain. A half naked toddler is shown once again. The camera
zooms into man with the red glove's dog tag and flashes to the wall with
all the missing dog flyers. Back to Buddy's flyer. The man with red
gloves and the dog stare at the man with the chain. The dogs attacks the
man with the chain. The man with the chain is on the floor. His face is
bloody and his body is badly injured. The dog stands over him with
blood covering its mouth.
A man discovers a large black spider in his home. He attempts to kill
it but it always escapes him. One night, while the man is sleeping, the
spider crawls over his body. The camera occasionally switches to the
spiders point-of-view as it spies on the man from above. The man
complains to someone on the phone about feeling pains on his ear. He
spots the spider on the wall and kills it with a rolled up magazine.
Laughing, he throws the spider in the toilet and flushes it down. He
groans as the pain in his ear has increased. He turns to the mirror and
sees many baby spiders emerging from his ear.
In Japan, a school girl claims that she does not believe God exists;
if he did, he wouldn't allow sensitive girls to fart. As she is farting,
she is discovered by a female teacher, Miss Yumi. The girl is revealed
to have romantic feelings for Miss Yumi, her favorite teacher. The
ground shakes, and an earthquake releases poisonous gas that kills
everyone. The girl and Miss Yumi run away to escape the gas. In a room,
the girl confesses to wanting to die by smelling Miss Yumi's gas
instead. Miss Yumi removes her skirt and farts for the girl. The girl
bends down to receive her gas, which is yellow. The yellow gas surrounds
the girl and consumes her. She and Miss Yumi are shown naked inside a
yellow area, presumably Miss Yumi's gas. The girls embrace and kiss.
- G: G is for Gravity
- Director: Andrew Traucki
- Writer: Andrew Traucki
This short is shown from a man's point of view. He is driving his car
to the beach. He parks his car and places bricks in a bag. He takes out
a surfboard and goes into the water. Swimming far, he falls underwater
for a long time and floats back up, presumably dead.
- H: H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion
- Director: Thomas Malling
- Writer: Thomas Malling
This short shows animals with human bodies. A male dog is at a strip
club and is aroused by a female fox. As she removes her clothing, a Nazi
symbol is revealed on her arm. A small toy-like tank drives up to him
and produces a metal fist that punches him between his legs. A series of
contraptions emerge and restrain him. She laughs while he is being
electrocuted and hung over spikes in water to die. A locket around his
neck opens and reveals encouraging words. The words echo in his head:
"Keep calm, my son, carry on." He manages to escape his restraints and
defeat the fox. He pushes her into the spikes in the water. Her skin
melts and her body explodes.
- I: I is for Ingrown
- Director: Jorge Michel Grau
- Writer: Jorge Michel Grau
A man is in a bathroom, wearing gloves, holding a red bottle and a
syringe. He place the bottle down and walks to the bathtub. He pushes
open the bath curtain to reveal a woman bound and gagged. With one arm
freed, she struggles against him as he holds her down to administer the
drug in the syringe. A wedding ring shown on his finger. He stumbles
away as she reaches out to him. In the tub, she scratches her skin until
it bleeds. She vomits and dies. A wedding ring shown on her finger. The
inner monologue of the woman is heard. She says the man changed her,
marked her. What he did was not original. He was basic and primal. She
arrived without looking. She didn't see this happening.
A Japanese man in blue is holding a sword over another man in white.
The man in white makes several ridiculous facial expressions, making the
man in blue sweaty and nervous. The camera zooms out to reveal that the
man in white has committed
seppuku,
resulting in the facial expressions. The man in blue swings his sword
and cuts the man in white's head off, laughing at the final expression
on his face.
- K: K is for Klutz
- Director: Anders Morgenthaler
- Writer: Anders Morgenthaler
A cartoon short about a woman using the bathroom. She struggles to
poop. When it finally comes out, it refuses to be flushed. She rolls a
ball of toilet paper and flushes it. The paper easily goes down, but not
the poop. It crawls out of the toilet and stops before her. She
attempts to clean it up, but is out of paper. While she is walking, it
gets stuck on the heel of her shoe. She kicks it into the toilet, but it
bounces back out. She does not want to touch it and attempts to blow it
away. When that doesn't work, she removes her bra to pick it up and
throw it away. The toilet takes her bra. Believing that she got rid of
it, she washes her hands, but hears something. She bends over the toilet
to see what it was. The poop is on the ceiling. Seeing that her dress
had slid down revealing her underwear, the poop drops back down into her
and emerges out of her mouth. People opened the door and laugh as they
think she is drunk, but panic when they realize she is dead.
- L: L is for Libido
- Director: Timo Tjahjanto
- Writer: Timo Tjahjanto
A bag is pulled off a man's head. He looks over and finds himself
restrained with leather straps to a chair with people, wearing masks,
watching him. Another man is also restrained in a chair a few feet away
from him. A naked woman appears on a stage in front of them and dances.
The side of the screen shows the words "Stage 1." The man in the other
chair masturbates and the first man follows suit. He is the first to
ejaculate. The other man begs for his help. A woman, who has been
sitting beside them, walks to the other man. She presses a button behind
his chair. A wooden spike appears from underneath him and slowly pokes
up and kills him. The first man competes against different opponents and
wins. As stage 12 begins, a woman in a wheelchair is placed on stage.
She has one leg. The other is prosthetic. She begins to masturbate with
her prosthetic leg. The protagonist's latest opponent is disgusted by
the girl and screams that the people behind the contest are sick. The
first man is exhausted, but continues to masturbate until he wins. The
woman sitting beside them spreads her legs and reveals an eye between
them. When she goes to push the button to kill the loser, it does not
work and the man begs for another chance. She kicks the box until the
spike shoots up, killing the loser and her as well. In the next stage,
the opponent is a skinny old man attacked to an IV. They are forced to
watch a man have sex with a young boy. The man with the IV masturbates
and ejaculates, but the protagonist vomits. He wakes up to see various
different women straddling him. He looks over and sees that he has been
placed on stage and two new men are chained to the chairs, watching him
and masturbating. The girl brings out a chainsaw and kills him as she
rides on top of him.
A woman is using the toilet. She attempts to flush it, but it does
not work. She goes to find the plunger. In the toilet is blood and
something else.
A man shows off his pet bird to a woman. He has trained it to do
tricks and speak. The woman laughs but is not impressed. The man reveals
a ring and proposes to her. As the woman tears up with excitement, the
bird says, "Don't worry, Joy. My girlfriend won't find out." The woman
wipes her tears and asks him "Who is Joy?" The man claims that the bird
probably remembers it from a movie. The woman grows upset as the bird
continues to say more obscene things. Angry, the woman grabs a knife.
Blood is splashed on the screen as the man is heard screaming for mercy.
- O: O is for Orgasm
- Director: Bruno Forzani, Héléne Cattet
- Writer: Bruno Forzani, Héléne Cattet
A man and woman are shown in provocative scenes. The woman throws her
head back and bubbles emerge from her mouth. The sounds of whips can be
heard, as are her moans, and various parts of her body are shown.
- P: P is for Pressure
- Director: Simon Rumley
- Writer: Simon Rumley
A woman is shown caring for three children by prostituting herself.
While she is gone, a man, presumably her boyfriend, is searching her
home for cash. The children huddled on a corner, scared. She walks into a
bar and a man approaches her. She rejects the man and he leaves her a
card. When she returns home and finds her money gone, she hugs the
children. She calls the man with the card and meets up with him. She
poses in front of a camera, stroking and crushing a cat's head with her
heel.
- Q: Q is for Quack
- Director: Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett
- Writer: Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett
Adam Wingard and Simon Barett are shown speaking about the movie and
suggesting ideas for a story with the letter Q. They decide to kill a
duck. In a cage, the duck sits, while two men prepare to shoot it with a
gun. The first man decides not to do it. The second man's gun is
jammed. He attempts to fix it, but accidentally shoots the first man,
who accidentally shoots the second man. Both men fall on the ground. The
cameraman runs off in fear, leaving them.
- R: R is for Removed
- Director: Srdjan Spasojevic
- Writer: Srdjan Spasojevic
A man is shown attached to an IV. A nurse removes a hospital gown
from a patient as the doctor watches. Skin is surgically removed from
the patient's back and is used to create
35 mm film.
He is taken out to a crowd of women cheering and touching him. When the
nurse leaves the room, the patient attacks the doctor and kills him. He
retrieves what they have taken out and leave the building, killing all
those who try to stop him. He walks to a train-track house, where he
pushes back a small train and collapses under it. It rains blood.
A torn and ripped American flag is shown. In a desert, a woman with a
gun drags another woman, who is handcuffed, out of a building. A hooded
man pursuits them. The handcuffed woman taunts the other to shoot her.
The gun happens to be out of bullets. She locks the woman in a truck and
uses a flamethrower on the man. She gets into the car and drives off.
She turns on the radio to silence the woman in the trunk, who has been
kicking inside of the car and yelling at her. Running out of gas, she
stops her car. She sees the man from earlier drive up to her. She takes
out the woman in the truck and throws her to him, apologizing and
begging him to take the other woman instead. He says it's not her time,
and that she can't run forever. He admits he never had to chase anyone
longer than her. He touches her hand. She falls into a filthy room,
another woman lying next to her. A torn and ripped American flag is
shown, as in the beginning. The other woman shakes her and finds that
she is dead and had a bag of drugs sticking out of her bra. The woman
takes the bag and begins to boil the contents in a spoon. She injects
them and sees visions of the desert and car.
- T: T is for Toilet[6]
- Director: Lee Hardcastle
- Writer: Lee Hardcastle
The parents of a young boy wonders why he fears the toilet. They
encourage him to use it. When he goes to use it, the toilet bubbles up
and turns into a monster, which kills the boy's parents. The boy wakes
up to find out it was all a dream. In the middle of the night, he goes
to use the toilet. His father, hearing him get up, goes to check on him.
The boy slips and falls and ends up getting his head stuck in the
toilet seat. His father laughs at him until the top of the toilet falls
and crushes his head, killing him. His father screams.
The short shows the point of view of a person being chased by an
angry mob. He kills many of them, but is knocked down by three men. They
pull out his fangs, drive a stake into his heart, and chop his head off
with an ax.
In a futuristic world, women are infertile. A female police officer
is applying to have a child and is denied. Some time later, she enters a
building with her robot companion, searching for rebels. She corners a
couple and a child. The woman hypnotizes the officer and places her in a
trance, while they attempt to escape. The police robot regains himself
and shoots the couple, and decapitates the little boy. The female
officer, now out of the trance, confronts the robot about killing the
boy as more officers enter the building. A man with tattoos explains
that the robot was only doing its job, killing parasites. He orders his
men to retrieve the body of the baby for research and study. The female
officer goes against him and he shoots her. The baby's body is missing.
It crawls about the room and attacks them. The tattooed man tells them
to shoot the head, which stops the body. The rebel man tells the female
officer that the baby is "the prophet," and she must protect him as she
is his mother now. The baby's head causes the tattooed man's head to
explode.
A series of random and vulgar scenes.
A middle-aged, overweight woman is harassed and made fun of as she
rides the train and walks home. The picture of a beautiful model in a
bikini is shown everywhere she goes. When she reaches home, the same
model is shown on her television. She eats everything in her
refrigerator, then strips and vomits into her bathroom sink. She takes
out a large knife and cuts various parts of her body. Bloodied, she goes
into the bathtub to peel off her skin and fat. She emerges as a
mutilated thin woman, and dies.
- Y: Y is for Youngbuck
- Director: Jason Eisener
- Writer: Jason Eisener
An old man is shown teaching a boy to shoot a deer. The same old man
is a janitor at a school. He spies on a group of boys playing basketball
in the gym through a window on the door. He turns to see the same deer
he taught the boy to shoot. After the boys leave the gym, he goes inside
and licks up the boys' sweat from the bench they were sitting on. The
scenes goes back to the woods where he killed the deer and chopped its
head off. The boy sits and watches in terror. The man takes off his
pants in front of the boy. The boy appears to him in the gym, covered in
blood. The boy pierces the old man's eyes with the deer's horns. He
chops the old man's head off and throws it aside, and puts the deer's
head over his.
Perhaps one of the most abstract of all of the short films,
Zetsumetsu deals with revisionist views of Japanese relations with West.
Depicting graphic nudity and in a game show environment, it deals with
cultural subjects of World War 2, U.S. Occupation, nuclear energy, and
modern society. These are addressed metaphorically, and phallic
symbolism abounds. Much of the dialogue is in Japanese but a few lines
are in English as well as an ending in a not too vague reference to
Dr. Strangelove
with one the central characters from the short rising from his wheel
chair and declaring in Japanese “My Emperor, it is standing.”, as his
erection pops up from his groin. This resurrection, much as in Dr.
Strangelove, attests that not only has the evil persisted but has been
reborn.
Contest
A contest was held for the role of the 26th director. The winner was UK-based director Lee Hardcastle, who submitted a
claymation short.
[7]
Reception
Critical reception for
The ABCs of Death has been mixed.
Rotten Tomatoes
reports that 44% of critics gave the film a positive review with an
average score of 5.1/10, based on 39 reviews. The consensus says the
film "is wildly uneven, with several legitimately scary entries and a
bunch more that miss the mark."
[8] Nerdist calls it "a midnight movie for folks with a sick sense of humour".
[citation needed] The Austin Chronicle
says it "soars to such artistic heights, and such tasteless depths, on a
global scale, no less, bodes well for the future of cinema fantastique
and otherwise",
[citation needed]
while Inside Pulse says the movie has a "brilliant concept but not
great execution". Many reviewers criticized the film shorts' unevenness.
[9][10][11] Dread Central
gave a mixed review for the film, saying the film is "full of
installments that are more bad than good" but that it was an "easy
watch" overall.
[12] Film School Rejects gave
The ABCs of Death a B rating, praising
D is for Dogfight while saying that "
M is for Miscarriage is almost insulting in its laziness".
[13] Screen Crush gave an overall positive review, saying that it was "a good time at the movies"
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