Movie Review: The ABCs of Death (2012)

Oh dear goodness, this was a test of perseverance. As I often like to take notes while I'm watching a new movie - just random thoughts that help me write my reviews later - The ABCs of Death nearly kicked my ass because a movie that was already over 2 hours long took me around 3 hours to watch because I had to keep pausing and writing. And like I predicted, I was sometimes writing very positive things and sometimes writing very, very negative things. The ABCs of Death is just like any anthology wherein you have hits and misses, but this one had far too many misses to make me recommend the whole thing.

So you probably know the deal here: Twenty-six filmmakers from around the world were each given a letter of the alphabet, and they had to come up with a word that started with that letter to make a short film about death. Out of the 26, I count 9 that I put stars by, meaning that I really liked it, and 3 that I put half stars by, meaning that I sorta liked it. I guess that's not so bad but a lot of these dudes could have done so much better. And a lot of them needed to stay away from anything having to do with the bathroom.

"A is for Apocalypse"

Directed by Nacho Vigalando

This was an excellent way to start things out. This is the kind of short film that I really like - they get the main point across but the story has so much room to grow if it was given more time. The lighting is beautiful and the effects work is absolutely killer. This one definitely gets a star.

"B is for Bigfoot"

Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano

Could have been so much better if two things had happened: one, if there had actually been a freaking Bigfoot in the short, and two, if the director hadn't wasted so much of the minimal time on the two characters telling the story rather than showing us something interesting. Weak. The main actress was good, though.

"C is for Cycle"

Directed by Diaz Espinoza

A mysterious hole in the bushes of a man's backyard are the center of a strange "cycle" of events in this short. The production quality leaves a little to be desired, but again this was semi-interesting because I can see it being a part of a much larger story. 

"D is for Dogfight"

Directed by Marcel Sarmiento

Easily my favorite one of all! "Dogfight" shows a boxer in some kind of underground Fight Club type thing were he has to fight a vicious dog. The whole thing is in slow motion and it looks so freaking pretty, you guys! The angles are perfect, and I'll be damned if the dog isn't one really good actor. It's a simple story with a simple little twist to it that had me totally LOLing and falling in love with this thing at the same time. Two thumbs up!

"E is for Exterminate"

Directed by Angela Bettis

I'm so sorry, my dear Angela, but this was lame. The CGI spider was bad enough but then the whole ending was completely ruined because it's so similar to an urban legend that's been around for years. I guess I was expecting something a bit more imaginative. Still love you, girlfriend.

"F is for Fart"

Directed by Noboru Iguchi

I have nothing nice to say about this. That is all.

"G is for Gravity"

Directed by Andrew Traucki

The death of a surfer is so... boring. All this consisted of was a POV shot of a guy getting his stuff out of the back of his car, running onto the beach and into the water, paddling around for a little bit, and then somehow falling in the water and drowning or something. The last shot is the surfboard standing on end in the water. Guess I don't get it, or it's just not all that impressive. Boo.

"H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion"

Directed by Thomas Cappelen Malling

Thus begins one of the many "What in the holy fuck is this" shorts. Or maybe it began with the fart one. A Nazi cat stripteasing for a dogfighter dog and then trying to kill him with some electric machine thing? Was this a reference to something else that I totally didn't get? Whatever. Hated it.

"I is for Ingrown"

Directed by Jorge Michel Grau

Gorgeous. A woman tied up in a bathtub is being murdered by her husband, with some really beautiful and meaningful dialogue playing in the background. The actress is also beautiful and so committed to the role that it is painful to watch the way she scratches at her throat and arms, and the way whatever her husband injected her with makes her vomit through her gag. Ew. Really nice job here, Mr. Grau!

"J is for Jidai-Geki (Samurai Movie)"

Directed by Yudai Yamaguchi

There's not a lot of substance or meaning to this short, but it's good for a bit of a laugh. The effects aren't bad, however, I'm still wondering about those wigs or whatever it was those guys had on the tops of their heads. Was there a point to that?

"K is for Klutz"

Directed by Anders Morganthaler

"K is for Klutz" is one of a few animated shorts in the bunch. Though the animation is nice, poo and toilet humor has, was, and always will be incredibly juvenile and unfunny so this one lost points with me for the subject matter.

"L is for Libido"

Directed by Timo Tjahjanto

This is one that started out like it could be half-funny, half-serious but then turned into all kinds of serious. It actually turns out to be pretty fucking fucked up, as it deals with the depths of sexual perversion and gratification. The gore is excellent with the spikes that come up through the chairs, and the images just get worse and worse as this short invades your mind. You all know I love the dark stuff so I was all over this one - even though there is a quick scene involving a child that... I can't even go there. The set is amazing, the acting is good, this looks like a real movie. Loved it.

"M is for Miscarriage"

Directed by Ti West

A shorter than short, lazy piece of "filmmaking." I expected so much more from Ti West because though this short does deliver an effective punch, it is by far the weakest of all the shorts and even worse than the fart one. So, so disappointing.

"N is for Nuptials"

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun

Surprisingly a very cute and entertaining piece about a man who buys a parrot to help him propose to his girlfriend and the parrot ends up revealing one of the man's secrets which turns out to be deadly for him! This one got a half star just for being funny even though there's not much else to the story. The actors are also beyond adorable.

"O is for Orgasm"

Directed by Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet

Not so much a short film as an experimental film, and a well done one at that. I couldn't give it a star because it just didn't do anything for me on a personal level, but I can admit that it is beautifully shot and is very good at keeping your attention. I would appreciate if someone would explain the bubbles to me, though.

"P is for Pressure"

Directed by Simon Rumley

Really nice story that is told with no dialogue and a succession of quick shots and short scenes to show the hard life of a young single woman with three kids. There's no horror element to the story, and it instead reaches you on a real emotional level that hits hard. I'll never condone the killing of a kitten for a bicycle but at least there's a happy ending. This one gets a star for sure.

"Q is for Quack"

Directed by Adam Wingard

OMG, this was genius. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (love both of these dudes) play themselves in the short, lamenting over the fact that they were assigned the letter "Q" for their ABCs of Death segment. Needless to say, they come up with a clever way to solve their problem - even if it doesn't have very good consequences for them. Too funny. I love these dudes even more now!

"R is for Removed"

Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic

From the director of the controversial A Serbian Film (which I still need to write about...) comes another hardcore - no pun intended - story about... something. Yeah, it was another one I didn't get at all. Some kind of medical experiment on a guy who's got pieces of film strip in his flesh or something? Is that right? Then he escapes and kills everyone in pretty gross ways. A lot of these shorts are starting to make me feel really, really stupid and like I should have paid more attention in English lit class about symbolism and all that crap. I need to read up on this one some more.

"S is for Speed"

Directed by Jake West

Hated this at first because it was incredibly amateurish and hokey looking, but it ended up getting a half star for turning into a more serious story about death chasing a pair of junkie girls. Nice turnaround!

"T is for Toilet"

Directed by Lee Hardcastle

After Dogfight, this is definitely my second favorite of all the segments. It's a pretty crude (effects-wise) claymation short about a boy's fear of the toilet. He has a dream where the toilet turns into a monster and hideously devours his parents, with some great stuff that is all the more entertaining because it's claymation. The ending is funny in a really, really horrible way - but you will completely love it. "Danny Glover had nothing to be afraid of in Lethal Weapon 2." So true.

"U is for Unearthed"

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Unearthed is the only short to take on a true horror trope - vampires! It's another one that avoids the cost of effects by doing it in POV but it works here, as a vampire first escapes from the earth, attacks people in the woods, and then is ceremoniously put down. Simple, but effective. That's all you need to do, people. Good work.

"V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)"

Directed by Kaare Andrews

Okay, um... wow! So put Vagitus up next to Miscarriage, and you'll understand my frustration with Mr. Ti West. Vagitus has this whole crazy sci-fi story about the future and prophets and babies - I don't care! There was wonderful action, acting, and effects work in such a short time that it felt like someone had cut together the best parts of a full length movie. Excellent!

"W is for WTF!"

Directed by Jon Schnepp

WTF indeed. It starts out as a real story, similar to what they did in Quack actually, but then just turns into a series of random shots of stuff I don't remember. The title pops onto screen at the end and you go, Oh. So none of that was supposed to make any sense or anything. Just a lot of WTF shots. Boring. Not creative.

"X is for XXL"

Directed Xavier Gens

Fucking YES, you guys. This was beyond perfect in so many ways. It's a social commentary, a moral commentary, and so incredibly gruesome and disturbing in an incredibly meaningful, heartbreaking way. Love, love, love it.

"Y is for Youngbuck"

Directed Jason Eisener

So, no one likes a perverted old guy and Eisener goes about the subject of revenge in a very interesting way. Still, I didn't like it. Not enough explanation or exploration, and it really needed to flesh out the story just a bit more.

"Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)"

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura

Very much the biggest WTF short of all - it out-WTFs the previous WTF segment, and I didn't know that was possible. I have no idea what this was about or what the point of it was so therefore I don't care and I don't like it. There's naked chicks and big penises, and way more ridiculousness than I can handle. An ADULT made this thing, right? Oi vey.

FINALLY, THE END. Okay, so I'm naming my top three favorites as Dogfight, Toilet, and XXL. Least favorite and most disappointing was Miscarriage, and also Hydro-Electric Diffusion, Gravity... and about 10 other ones. I was hoping for a better balance of hits and misses with all these shorts but I guess that might have been impossible with all these different personalities and styles. We'll see what a new crop of directors can come up with in the next ABCs of Death!

Movie Review: The Woman (2011)

Hey, bloggers! It's February again and in the horror world, that means it is Women in Horror Month! How apropos is it that the post I had scheduled to run today would actually fit into this? Freaky!

It's been a heck of a long wait for this one, bloggers! I had totally forgotten about The Woman until I saw it at the video store the other day (yeah, a video store! They still have those!). The Jack Ketchum book of the same name that this movie is based off of is a true masterpiece in horror, as it is one of the most horrific tales I have ever read - in a good and a bad way, if that is possible. Ketchum is known for his balls-out horror yarns that pull no punches, and this adaptation is no exception. (Psst, you can read my review of the book here.)

As established in the previous film Offspring (which by the way is an okay little horror flick despite its bad actors and low budget - I also reviewed that movie here - am I a shameless self-promoter or what?!) and the books, the titular character The Woman is the last of a clan of feral cannibals who once savaged the woods and caves where they lived. When lawyer Chris Cleek, a.k.a. The Worst Father/Husband/Man in the History of the World, stumbles upon The Woman while out hunting, he decides to capture her and keep her locked in his cellar in an attempt to teach her how to act more civilized. His brow-beaten wife and daughter and his douchebag son are brought along for the ride. 

The Woman is an interesting little concoction because the book and the screenplay were written simultaneously by author Jack Ketchum and director Lucky McKee. This is probably the reason why the book and film follow each other so closely, except for the fact that the movie sets a much different tone than the book. Ketchum's The Woman was a very dark, gory, and disturbing look not just into what Chris does to The Woman but into the dynamics of this intensely screwed up family. Though The Woman herself no doubt has a gross, cannibalistic, and brutal nature, that doesn't even seem to compare to the atrocities committed by Chris Cleek alone. His power over the people around him is so severe that you find yourself hating every character at one point or another because they can't take down this one little man.

Lucky McKee's film, as aforementioned, has a slightly different tone, and one that I was not too happy about at first. In all these scenes that were supposed to be nasty and dirty, there was this banging, upbeat soundtrack behind it that too often took away from the seriousness and utter horror of the situation (well, except the end, which ROCKED). When Chris first sees The Woman bathing in the creek, the music started up again and gave the scene that feeling like, "Holy shit! This is great! I'm watching a naked chick take a bath!" instead of what the scene was really about - Chris zeroing in on his prey, another woman he can possibly brutalize and control. I understand that the soundtrack was used to lighten the mood of a movie that would otherwise be so freaking depressing you would want to kill yourself after watching it, and for some scenes the soundtrack was used really well (loved the song playing when Peg is on the field at school), but to me this shouldn't be a "light" story at all.

The mood and tone of the film is also set by Sean Bridgers, who gives an exceptionally eerie portrayal of Chris. The way he plays this man who is so completely evil and callous makes the audience angry and upset. After punching his wife in the gut, he can casually tell his daughter (whom he's been raping) to go get a cloth for her, as if she just had a little headache or something. Bridgers's performance is probably best described as one that is actually quite funny - but the most uncomfortable funny you've ever experienced. You can laugh or chuckle at the calm and almost likable way he delivers his lines - if what he was talking about wasn't so damn awful! I was very impressed by this man's performance and the commitment he gave to a role that nobody in their right mind would ever want to play.

And I'll be damned if Pollyana McIntosh (what a name, eh?) doesn't deliver with every fiber of her being in her portrayal of The Woman. She gave a standout performance in the same role in Offspring, especially in one of those last moments where she starts eating a guy's brains out of his head, so it's great that the filmmakers had the foresight to keep her character around and center another story around The Woman. One thing I wish Lucky and crew would have done was to include subtitles for The Woman's strange made-up language. I mean, mostly you get the gist of what she's saying from her expression and gestures but especially in the part where she asks Peg for help from her father, calling her "Mother" because she is somehow able to sense that Peg is pregnant, I think it would have helped to have the subtitles to show early on the connection formed between Peg and The Woman.

There is a smidge of Ketchum's famous gore throughout the movie but you have to make it to the ending for the really good stuff. Chris has finally gone too far when he kills Peg's teacher by feeding her to the dogs, and Peg finally sets The Woman free from the cellar to have her fun. Oh, it's glorious. Face-biting, body-throwing, body-hacking, heart-ripping, and heart-eating - all the bad guys in the movie finally get their comeuppance and it is bloody fantastic, if you'll pardon the pun. The gore effects are really well done here and as in Offspring, the filmmakers leave nothing to the imagination and show the audience these kills with all the blood and intestines and organs in their arsenal.

I think The Woman is looked at as a "love it or hate it" movie (or an "understand it or don't understand it" movie) and it may not be for everyone (especially this guy) but I'm one of the ones that loved it. It is probably the best adaptation of Ketchum's work so far, and though the handling of the material at some parts is not to my liking, the performances, editing, and effects more than make up for it.

P.S. Jack Ketchum rules!