Last BIFF Film Review - The ABCs of Death

Closing night of BIFF and one of the last films screened is 'The ABCs of Death'.  Not actually a movie, but 26 short films all run together with only one thing in common - death.  The creators of this film took 26 directors from around the world, many working in the horror genre, and allocated them one letter of the alphabet, a $5,000 budget and a maximum running time of 4 minutes.  That letter had to represent a method of killing someone, but the director had complete creative freedom of how to choose and film their segment.

The result of this little experiment was for me, a little too bizarre.  Some were obvious, some were extremely tenuously linked to their letter, some were artsy fartsy (O is for Orgasm), some were blah, and some were just extremely weird (F is for Fart).  This movie is not for the faint hearted and will at some stage offend you.  If you haven't been offended up to the letter Y, don't worry, you will be offended by the letter Z, which was directed by our mate Hiro Nishimura (last year's 'Helldriver', 'Tokyo Gore Police') and is completely crazy.  You won't ever have seen anything like this.  Whether you want to or not I think will depend on your mood - my overall vibe was that I didn't like it very much. It was too disjointed, the death methods were not traditional or scary enough for my liking, and the directors are not well known enough to be able to successfully play 'guess the director' before the end credits roll (with two exceptions - we spotted the Metalocalypse guys fingerprints on their segment and Nishimura of course).  I preferred last year's Film Festival entry "50 Best Kills" which was a mash up of the 50 best death scenes, commentated by Lars Nilsson of the Alama Drafthouse Cinemas in the US.  Much more fun!

If you are interested to know what the 26 chosen letters are, please scroll down and I've listed them below.  Not the best closing to a Film Festival that I've had, but an experience.

Apocalypse
Directed by Nacho Vigalondo.

Bigfoot
Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano.

Cycle
Directed by Ernesto Diaz Espinoza.

Dogfight
Directed by Marcel Sarmiento.

Exterminate
Directed by Angela Bettis.

Fart
Directed by Noburo Iguchi.

Gravity
Directed by Andrew Traucki.

Hydro-Electric Diffusion
Directed by Thomas Cappelen Malling.

Ingrown
Directed by Jorge Michel Grau.

Jidai-Geki
Directed by Yudai Yamaguchi.

Klutz
Directed by Anders Morgenthaler.

Libido
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto.

Miscarriage
Directed by Ti West.

Nuptials
Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun.

Orgasm
Directed by Bruno Forzani, Helene Cattet.

Pressure
Directed by Simon Rumley.

Quack
Directed by Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett.

Removed
Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic.

Speed
Directed by Jake West.

Toilet
Directed by Lee Hardcastle.

Unearthed
Directed by Ben Wheatley.

Vagitus
Directed by Kaare Andrews.

WTF!
Directed by Jon Schnepp.

XXL
Directed by Xavier Gens.

Youngbuck
Directed by Jason Eisener.

Zetsumetsu
Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura.