Movie Madness: The ABCs of Death (2012)

So today wasn't particularly interesting, I suppose. I had a geology test (let's all hope I got a good grade, oh man). I have to write my own eulogy for one of my classes tomorrow (which I find highly inappropriate, and I suggested alternatives to the professor and she turned me down, so I'm going to make mine as snarky as possible now).

Netflix chose this movie for me, and I've seen a lot of people talk about this in my Facebook horror group too, so!

A warning to my vegan friends: There are multiple shorts in this that involve harm to animals, some of which even my tough-as-nails military boyfriend found incredibly disturbing. If you still wish to watch this but skip the letters involving this, skip D, E, H (though this was done more in a cartoonish-style and they're humanoid; this one did not upset me but I figured I'd include it anyway for particularly sensitive people) P, and possibly Q (though no harm comes to an animal in that one, it is discussed). Also, while D is upsetting, I will say that the animal does not die and there IS revenge, though I still teared up and had to look away multiple times. To me, the most upsetting one was P.

Trigger warning: Letter X may upset those with body image issues; while I found it incredibly thought provoking, it may upset those who are sensitive to this issue. Some of the segments also include a large amount of gore or moments of vomiting, to the point that it even made me flinch.

I've been meaning to watch 'The ABCs of Death' for a while, and it was... interesting. This film is an anthology of short films, each one tackling a letter of the alphabet and showcasing 26 different ways to die. Some shorts were far better than others, and some were a bit too gory for my taste. (Also, some were REALLY sexual and were actually almost pornographic and just too weird for my taste.)

Rather than give you a synopsis of each letter, I'm just going to list off the ones that I particularly enjoyed and why:

• B - I love the idea of creepy bedtime stories. Eric and I were discussing different cultures and their stories (I brought up German and Russian fairy tales, which tend to be particularly fucked up). This also reminded me of the evil snowmen in that Doctor Who Christmas special, heh.
• F - Oh my god. It's so crude, but I just thought it was so funny and weird. This is not for those with a mature palette - it's stupid and childish in the best way possible.
• H - There was something incredibly endearing about this short. I actually wished it had been the whole film, to be completely honest. It has this great feeling of a war-noir film mixed with cute (yet oddly sexualized humanoid) animals, so.
• J - Like F, this isn't really for the mature audiences (at least, until the very end of the short). There are moments where I was giggling, even though I could guess that what was happening was fairly morbid, but.
• K - I LOVED K. I was waiting for an animated sequence, and it did not disappoint me. It's so cute and awkward and I felt like this could possibly happen to me (even though there's no way this could possibly happen to me).
• N - Apparently I gravitated towards the more lighthearted segments, because even the death in this one made me laugh. I also thought that this was one that, in comparison to the other segments, was actually realistic.
• T - Another animated sequence that brought me back to childhood terrors and made me laugh at the same time. It's a little bit on the rougher side of quality in terms of the animation, but it was still incredibly enjoyable.
• U - Basically, I liked the idea of the "different" perspective. 
• V - I'm actually kind of one the fence with this one. I thought the story was incredibly intriguing, but I'm sad that they chose this format to create it. This is meant to be an entire film, to have more time to strengthen their ideas, and it's a shame that it gets crammed into a short film instead.

Overall, I ended up rating this a three out of five on my Netflix account. Some of these films are far superior to others (some are weird for the sake of weird, some made me nauseous with the unnecessary amount of gore, etc.) and the range is so wide that I really can't say if I totally loved this or hated this. But, I feel like that's common with anthology films. (I felt the same way about 'Paris, je t'aime'.)

Let me know if you've seen/enjoyed this! Did you have any favourite/least favourite segments? Feel free to leave a comment below or send me an email if you have anything to say about it!

Halloween's almost here! Is anyone else incredibly excited!?

I'll leave you for the day, dearies, but I'll be back tomorrow with some more horror fun!

xo, Kate