2 out of 5

Director: 26 motherfuckers

As most of the reviews are mentioning, ‘ABCs of Death’ is a great anthology concept that suffers from the same unevenness as most anthologies… unfortunately, since this has 26 vignettes to sift through over two hours, even with about half of them being not bad – and maybe count on one hand the ones that are watch-again great – the memory of the ones that just don’t work takes up enough runtime to effectively hamper one’s enjoyment of the ‘experience’, especially since it’s front-loaded with the misses (in my opinion).  So maybe watching it in chunks is preferable.  The most common suggestion thus far has been that the collection needed a bit more guidance, and I think I agree but I can’t say what that guidance should have been.  If we had kept things too serious we wouldn’t have gotten Lee Hardcastle’s excellent ‘T’ animation, or limiting how long a section could be might’ve rushed Spasojevic’s amazing ‘R’ submission – so the tactic of giving directors $5000 and free creative reign was maybe all that could’ve been done.  You’ll know the great bits even if you don’t like them (‘L’ is brutal and crude, but shows effort and out-of-the-box creativity), and in hindsight you’ll think that some sections were better than they watched at the time – it’s just so up and down in tone – and the ones that throw the flow off REALLY throw it off – that you can’t settle on a feeling.  So it is what’s billed – it’s an ‘event,’ not really a cohesive movie, with some talented people doing some interesting things that, inevitably, get exhausting when strung together.  If a home release is packed with extras (and obvious chapter skips), this would work better.