A 2012 anthology horror/black comedy film consisting of 26 shorts, each named for a letter of the alphabet and dealing with the subject of death. The title of each segment is only shown after it has ended, providing a guessing game for the viewer as to what word the short's designated letter stands for.
A sequel was released September 18, 2014, with 26 brand new shorts. One of them (the letter M) was by amateur filmmakers, chosen in the 26th Director competition
. A second sequel (consisting only of rejected "M" entries) was released in 2016.
T is for Toilet, one of the shorts from the first film, received a sequel called Ghost Burger that was released in parts between 2013 and 2014 in Lee Hardcastle's Youtube channel.
Tropes:
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General
- Black Comedy: A few of the segments segue into horror-comedy territory.
- Color Motif: Each segment is bookended with a zoom in or out from something red.
- Drone of Dread: The closing credits cleverly uses heavily reverberated audio from each short when the respective short's credits are on screen, starting from “I is for Ingrown”. The result is a haunting ambient piece that makes up most of the credits.
- Genre Shift: The whole point of this anthology, showcasing the various kinds of horror from different parts of the world through different visual mediums.
- Gorn: There is a lot of explicit and bloody violence in many of the shorts.
- Gratuitous Japanese: "J is for Jidai-geki (Samurai Movie)" and "Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)" are named in Japanese, both because both shorts are directed by Japanese directors, and because there are very few words in English that start with these letters.
- Improbable Infant Survival:
- Played straight in "B is for Bigfoot" and "Y is for Youngbuck", where the children present in the segments do not get killed.
- Averted in "M is for Miscarriage", "P is for Pressure" (where the main character crushes a kitten's head beneath her heel), and "T is for Toilet" (where the young boy gets his head crushed while using the toilet).
- Double subverted in "V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)", in which a baby is decapitated, but thanks to its psychic powers is still alive, and capable of avenging itself, as a disembodied head.
- Mood Whiplash: To give you a fair idea, "I is for Ingrown" is a depressing segment about a woman being injected with a lethal poison and Dying Alone in a bathtub. "Jidai-geki" is about a samurai warrior who can't execute another warrior because he keeps making hilarious faces.
- Nobody Poops: Averted in the "K is for Klutz", "R is for Removed", and "T is for Toilet" segments. The "K" segment has a woman get killed while trying to get rid of her own bowel movement, the "R" segment features a bed pan being used, and the "T" segment is about a boy being toilet trained.
- Red Herring / Red Herring Twist: Seeing as each short's name is revealed only at the end of the short, several segments feature a plot element that just so happens to start with the letter the short is named after. The short is never named after said element. One example would be Zetsumetsu (Extinction), which never features an extinction.
- Show Within a Show: The "Q is for Quack" and "W is for WTF" segments are about the real life crew members trying to figure out what to do for the "Q" and "W" segments for this very film.
- Silence Is Golden: A majority of segments have minimal to no dialogue. In particular, the “G”, “M”, “O”, “P”, “R”, and “Y” segments are entirely dialogue-free.
- Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: The movie alternates bleak, highly disturbing segments (such as a woman being left to die in Ingrown, men being impaled for not masturbating to some sick shit in L is for Libido, and an obese woman skinning herself in X is for XXL) with stories about farting and pooping, although the short dealing with a man-eating toilet manages to be rather scary and funny at the same time.
- Toilet Humour:
- "F" and "T" stand for "fart" and "toilet".
- Also "K is for Klutz," which is all about a woman using the toilet and trying to flush a pile of crap down said toilet.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Several shorts have people throw up on-camera, often in extreme close-up.
- The X of Y: The ABCs of Death
A is for Apocalypse
Written and directed by: Nacho Vigalondo
- Frying Pan of Doom: A hysterical woman attacks her bedridden husband with this. She had meant for him to die from poisoning long before then but has run out of time. The title is then revealed to be "A is for Apocalypse", implying that this is a Mercy Kill.
- Made of Iron: The husband survives being poisoned, stabbed repeatedly with a kitchen knife (including the knife being shoved through his neck and left there), having scalding grease thrown in his face, and being battered repeatedly with a Frying Pan of Doom.
- Mercy Kill: With the title in mind and the woman trying to kill her husband repeatedly, it paints a picture that she's trying to kill him so he won't have to worry about the apocalypse. Unfortunately for the both of them, the husband turns out to be way too resilient for his own good.
B is for Bigfoot
Written and directed by: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
- Accidental Truth: Dulce and Erik fabricate a story about the Abominable Snowman coming out every night to take away kids, but only those who stay up at night, to scare Xochitl into staying in bed. They are then killed by homeless man in almost exactly the manner they described to Xochitl. Xochitl is spared because she hiding under the cover counting sheep, just as they told her to do.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The homeless man shows up and kills a couple for no apparent reason, leaving a little girl they're babysitting alive for the same.
C is for Cycle
Written and directed by: Ernesto Diaz Espinoza
- Here We Go Again!: Cycle ends with Bruno in exactly the same place he was at the start, with the implication that he is now trapped in a unending loop (hence the title).
D is for Dogfight
Written and directed by: Marcel Sarmiento
- Bad People Abuse Animals: The unnamed trainer, he even one ups his evil by forcing owner and pet to fight to the death.
- Beastly Bloodsports: A gang abducts dogs and then uses then in death matches against humans.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Dogfight features the hero getting his dog back and punishing the dog snatcher.
- Hate Sink: The unnamed trainer runs an organization where he kidnaps dogs. When their humans come looking for them, he has them kidnapped too. He subjects both human and dog to Training from Hell before forcing them to fight to the death.
- Man Bites Man: After the dog latches on to his arm, the protagonist retaliates by sinking his teeth into the dog's throat.
- Overcrank: The whole of "Dogfight" is shot at a slower pace, to
wince-inducing effect.
E is for Exterminate
Written and directed by: Angela Bettis
- Ear Ache: A horde of spiders erupt from the man's ear when the egg's hatch.
- Spiders Are Scary: The whole point of "Exterminate" is about a man being menaced by a spider.
- Urban Legend: "Exterminate" follows an old urban legend of spiders being able to lay eggs inside people's bodies.
F is for Fart
Written and directed by: Noboru Iguchi
- Deadly Gas: An earthquake unleashes a deadly gas that kills everyone in the school.
- Fartillery: Miss Yumi's farts are toxic enough to allow someone to commit suicide by inhaling them.
- Gasshole: Yoshie's farts are powerful enough to cause her skirt to flip up. Miss Yumi can fill an entire room with the gas from her farts.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Yoshie has very poorly disguised crush on with Yumi. When they are faced with the cloud of Deadly Gas, Miss Yumi reveals that her feeling are reciprocated, and the segment ends with the two of them making out in the Land of the Dead.
G is for Gravity
Written and directed by: Andrew Traucki
- Suicide by Sea: Gravity follows an unseen protagonist he weighs himself down with bricks, paddles out into the ocean, and sinks to the bottom; his surfboard sticking upright out of the water like a gravestone.
H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion
Written and directed by: Thomas Malling
- Adventurer Outfit: Bertie wears the classic 'airman' version': bomber jacket, scarf, gloves, boots, flying helmet and goggles. He is also an anthropomorphic bulldog.
- The Baroness: Frau Scheisse is Nazi Foxy Vixen who spends most of the segment in boot, shorts, a swastika armband, and nothing else.
- Bilingual Bonus: “Frau Scheisse” roughly translates to Mrs. Shit.
- Death Trap: Frau Scheisse has prepared a particularly elaborate one for her nemesis Bertie. Had she gone with something simpler, she might have succeeded.
- Diesel Punk: Set in a universe where World War II was fought by anthropomorphic animals, the setting has very diesel punk feel: especially Frau Scheisse's elaborate industrial Death Trap.
- Electric Torture: Frau Scheisse takes the opportunity to electrocute Bertie several times while she is attempting to force him into her Death Trap.
- Eye Pop: Bertie's eyes do this when he sees Frau Scheisse performing her striptease. They later do it in pain after her Groin Attack.
- Foxy Vixen: Frau Scheisse is a sexy Nazi fox woman posing as burlesque dancer.
- Groin Attack: Frau Scheisse uses a small robot to punt Bertie in the groin so hard that his eyes pop out on stalks.
- Hate Sink: As a parody of WWII British propaganda films, this short has a loathsome Nazi in the form of Frau Scheisse. After seducing Ace Pilot Bertie the Bulldog, Scheisse has a small robot punch him in the groin to capture him. She then proceeds to subject Bertie to Electric Torture while slowly lowering him into electrified water to shock him to death.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Frau Scheisse falls victim to her own Death Trap.
- Shovel Strike: When Bertie starts getting the upper hand, Frau Scheisse pulls a shovel off the side of the control unit and attempts to clobber him.
- World of Funny Animals: The segment's universe is one where anthropomorphic animals fought in Diesel Punk WWII.
- Wartime Cartoon: The short is meant to imitate one of these, only in live-action. The results are uncanny, to say the least.
- You Can Leave Your Hat On: Frau Scheisse poses as burlesque dancer and performs a striptease to lure Bertie into her trap.
I is for Ingrown
Written and directed by: Jorge Michel Grau
- All There in the Manual: The credits reveal the reason Ingrown is named as such: "2015 women murdered in the last 10 years in Mexico. 200 women a month. The horror is not on the screen."
- Bound and Gagged: The woman in "Ingrown", who is in this position in a man's bathtub before he injects her with motor oil that causes her death.
J is for Jidai-geki (Samurai Movie)
Written and directed by: Yûdai Yamaguchi
- Bait-and-Switch: Of a sort. Those trying to guess what the short is called but aren't very knowledgeable about Japanese movies (and even some that are) might be tempted to guess that the title of this segment is "Japan."
- Seppuku: An executioner prepares to decapitate a samurai; however, the samurai begins performing a series of bizarre and physically impossible facial expressions, causing the executioner to panic. A man off-screen tells the executioner to finish the job, as he notices that the samurai is performing seppuku. The executioner, who turns out to be a kaishakunin, beheads the samurai, but then laughs at the ridiculous expression that the latter made.
K is for Klutz
Written and directed by: Anders Morgenthaler
- The Can Kicked Him: The protagonist is killed in the toilet when her own stool rams her way up her rectum and out of her mouth at high speed.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: There is no explanation for how the turd comes to life, nor does it speak to show any personality. It just shows up, refuses to go down the toilet, and rams its way through the woman that made it, killing her.
- Talking Poo: An animated stool gets into a battle of wits with the woman who produced it, and who is now trying to flush it. The stool winds up killing her.
L is for Libido
Written and directed by: Timo Tjahjanto
- Chained to a Bed: After failing in his final task, the protagonist wakes up to find himself chained to a bed with a beautiful woman making love to him. For a few moments, things to going much better for him. And then they get much, much worse.
- Chainsaw Good: After finally failing to be the first to climax, the protagonist wakes up to find Chained to a Bed, having sex with a beautiful woman. Who then pulls out a chainsaw and proceeds to hack him to death while she continues to ride him.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: While looking up the skirt of his female captor, the protagonist sees an eye staring back at him. Given his deteriorating physical and mental state at the time, this may have been a hallucination.
- Out with a Bang: The protagonist is murdered by a beautiful woman while they are having sex.
M is for Miscarriage
Written and directed by: Ti West
- Gross-Up Close-Up: If you don't want to see what a dead fetus looks like, skip "Miscarriage."
N is for Nuptials
Written and directed by: Banjong Pisanthanakun
- Fowl-Mouthed Parrot: Nuptials has a man buying his fiancee a parrot, which he had trained to give her a wedding ring to propose to her. But after the proposal was made...the bird starts repeating the words of the man and his mistress during sex.
- Not in Front of the Parrot!: A man's pet bird helps him propose to his girlfriend in a very adorable way... Then the bird exposes its owner's true nature. Hilarity Ensues.
O is for Orgasm
Written and directed by: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
- Erotic Asphyxiation: The end of the short has the man pulling out a leather belt to strangle the woman. It either goes horribly awry or is used as a cover for murder, depending on your interpretation.
P is for Pressure
Written and directed by: Simon Rumley
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Brilliantly deconstructed in Pressure, where the woman gets the money she needs by crushing a cat under her heels for an animal crush video.
- Gory Discretion Shot: We (thankfully) do not see the main character from "Pressure" crush a poor kitten's head. We do hear it though.
- Platonic Prostitution: The john hires the main character crush a kitten beneath her high heel shoes while he films it. None of the hookers he approaches will touch the job.
- Red Light District: Pressure opens and closes in the city's red light district.
Q is for Quack
Written and directed by: Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett
- Adam Westing: Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett enjoy playing coke-sniffing, hypocritical versions of themselves.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Adam and Simon kill themselves when Simon points his gun at Adam while trying to find the safety catch. The gun goes off shooting Adam, whose own gun discharges and shoots Simon.
- What Happened to the Duck?: The fate of the duck that was intended to be shot unknown.
R is for Removed
Written and directed by: Srđan Spasojevićnote
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The patient lets the nurse live when he escapes because she was the only one of the staff who was kind to him.
- Blown Across the Room: When the patient shoots one of the guards, the guard is blown backwards across the corridor and smashes out through a window.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The doctors keeping the man hostage and forcing him into surgeries are never given an explanation for why they want the film strips his body makes. We never even learn what's on them.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: While escaping, the patient smashes a glass flask full of blood over the orderly's head.
- Human Resources: The killer in "Removed" goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against doctors who have been harvesting his skin to make 35 mm film.
- Riddle for the Ages: Why was the patient attempting to tow that locomotive?
- The Unreveal: The killer's face is never shown.
S is for Speed
Written and directed by: Jake West
- All Just a Dream: The segment turns out to be a drug-induced hallucination.
- Badass Longcoat: The Hooded Man gets his name from the longcoat he wears, which includes a hood that obscures his face.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Roxanne pulls a flamethrower from the trunk of her car and tries to barbecue the hooded man. It doesn't work.
- Implacable Man: Nothing Roxanne does to the hooded man stops him. When he finally catches her, he congratulates on her leading him a better chase than any of his other victims.
- In the Hood: The Hooded Man gets his name from the Badass Longcoat her wears, complete with a hood that obscures his face.
- Person with the Clothing: Roxanne's pursuer is only identified as 'The Hooded Man'.
- Punk in the Trunk: Roxanne stuffs Lulu into the trunk of her car before speeding off. Lulu keeps shouting insults at Roxanne as they drive.
T is for Toilet
Written and directed by: Lee Hardcastle
- Absurd Phobia: Features a child who is literally afraid of the toilet, to the point of having nightmares about it turning into a monster and killing his parents. Justified at the end, when the toilet ends up falling apart and crushing his skull. Albeit he survives it thankfully.
- The Can Kicked Him: The boy gets his head trapped between the toilet seat and the bowl, and then is killed when the cistern falls off the wall and crushes his skull. That being said, Ghost Burger reveals he managed to survive the incident.
- Deranged Animation: Lee Hardcastle uses his unsettlingly-amateurish yet gory style of claymation to this segment.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The toilet just comes to life for no reason and massacres the protagonist family. Of course, it is a child's nightmare, so having no logical reason for the horror fits.
- Toilet Horror: A kid dreams about being in the restroom while his toilet turns into a man-eating monster.
U is for Unearthed
Written and directed by: Ben Wheatley
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Angry mob vs cornered vampire. Bet on angry mob.
- Decapitation Presentation: The mob member with the axe decapitates the vampire and holds its head aloft. This is seen from Murderer P.O.V., indicating that the vampire's senses are still functioning at this point.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The vampire is awakened and immediately goes on a killing spree until it's put down. Judging by the fact that it only speaks in streaks and growls, it might not even be sentient.
- Hero Antagonist: The angry mob.
- Murderer P.O.V.: Unearthed is shown through the eyes of the vampire. Even after decapitation.
- Our Vampires Are Different: These are ravenous creatures who kill the whole time they're awake, and only speak in shrieks and growls. They're impervious to most harm, and can only be killed by a stake to the heart followed by decapitation.
- Villain Protagonist: The vampire, the whole segment is seen from their perspective and we follow their actions throughout the short.
- Xenofiction: And not one of those self-righteous Humans Are the Real Monsters ones either. No, Unearthed is from the perspective of a complete monster who lives only to kill and destroy, and you're supposed to feel good when they slash the bastard's head off.
V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)
Written and directed by: Kaare Andrews
- Crapsack World: "V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)" is set in a dystopian future where, due to overpopulation, reproduction is only allowed by permit. Any unapproved babies are taken and killed. Meanwhile, the government has instituted a campaign of genocide and human experimentation against psychics, to the point of declaring them legally not alive.
- Dystopian Edict: "Vagitus" is set in a future where women must earn their fertility through service to the government.
- Hate Sink: Stoker is an agent of a dystopian government in a Bad Future where procreation without a permit is banned and psychics are subjected to genocide. When two of his agents capture a psychic family, Stoker has all of them killed with the intent to resurrect the baby for experimentation, flat admitting that he doesn't consider them to be people. When the baby reanimates and starts massacring his goons, Stoker orders the guy holding its head gunned down in a desperate attempt to wipe out the child. Cold and ruthless, Stoker exists to put a hatable face on a nightmarish regime.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The robot has its eyes glow red whenever it detects the influence of mind control.
W is for WTF!
Written and directed by: Jon Schnepp
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The city is attacked by a giant walrus that fires laser beams from its eyes.
- Chainmail Bikini: The warrior woman fighting the giant walrus is clad in a bikini made of leather and metal.
- Mind Screw: Living up to it's name, the segment is unapologitically nonsensical
- Shout-Out: An outbreak of clown zombies prompts the response, "Are they looking for magnets?".
X is for XXL
Written and directed by: Xavier Gens
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Subverted. After the obese woman cuts herself into an emaciated figure, she falls over dead.
- Flaying Alive: Gertrude does this to herself in an attempt to become skinny.
- The Freelance Shame Squad: Every person Gertrude passes on the subway and the street mocks her for her weight.
- Glasgow Grin: When Gertrude starts cutting herself, she cuts her mouth into a Glasgow grin in an attempt to have a permanent smile like the skinny girl on the television.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: The main character ravenously chows down on slop she takes out the fridge, with close shots of her mouth as she chews.
- Weight Loss Horror: Gertrude, an overweight woman, wanders the streets of France as people everywhere taunt her size; she is haunted by images of thin, attractive women. She sadly gorges herself on food before deciding to finally do something about her weight. Using a variety of sharp objects, Gertrude proceeds to cut the fat off of her body. She walks out of the bathtub in a skeletal state and missing all her skin; she poses briefly and then bleeds to death.
Y is for Youngbuck
Written and directed by: Jason Eisener
- Bambification: Subverted. A decapitated deer's head is used to kill someone.
- Eye Scream: The pedophile janitor gets antlers jammed into his eyes.
- Hate Sink: The unnamed Villain Protagonist is a school janitor and secret pedophile. After he pervs on some boys playing basketball, he licks the sweat from the bleachers with disgusting glee. Eventually convincing one of the boys to go hunting with him, the janitor rapes the kid after he kills a deer.
- Paedohunt: The disgustingly creepy janitor has apparently molested a boy. Thankfully, he gets what's coming to him when the boy kills him.
- Repeat Cut: The arrow is seen being fired from three different angles.
Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)
Written and directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura
- Bloody Hilarious: Zetsumetsu is directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, so this isn't much of a surprise.
- Crapsack World: Takes place in a post-apocalyptic Japan suffering from the aftermath of a nuclear strike.
- Mind Screw: Zetsumetsu is just all over the place and nobody seems to be able to tell what's going on.
- Non-Indicative Name: Aside from the post-apocalyptic setting, there doesn't seem to be anything related to extinction going on... or maybe not. Who can tell?
- One-Hit Polykill: The Rice Girl fires one bullet that goes through the heads of all three men making sushi.
- Refuge in Audacity: Zetsumetsu seems to be going for this with the over-the-top political and sexual imagery in addition to all the violence.
- Shout-Out: Zetsumetsu contains numerous references to Dr. Strangelove, particularly the wheelchair-bound narrator and nuclear war theme.
