MovieChat Forums > The ABCs of Death (2013) Discussion > Dogfight was easily the best one.

Dogfight was easily the best one.


Other than the fact the canine actor obviously wouldn't stop wagging his tail, I thought this was by far the most coherent one suited to a short:

We establish the lost dog posters at the start and the dog tags
The fight itself is very brutal and you keep waiting for the guy to die
When the big reveal happens that he was the owner, it's actually a good twist
It ends with the death of the guy running the fights

It had a simple arc, and was very clearly defined into what was going on.

While I appreciated the first person vampire one in theory (Unearthed) and the effects of the sci-fi Prophet baby one (I don't remember the name) one didn't do enough with the concept while the other tried to jam a trippy sci-fi world into the space of a few minutes WITH character development, which was quite simply too much for the short.

Past that.. a lot of these were dumb. Really really dumb. REALLY DUMB. For example the opening one, A is for Apocalypse, makes no sense - she wants to kill the guy because the end of the world is coming to.. save him the pain I guess, so decides the best way to do this is to repeatedly throw scalding water in his face? I really liked the idea of a short where she murders her husband and it turns out to be compassion due to the horrors outside, but they TOTALLY turned it into laugh out loud looney tunes.

Most of the others seemed to run on the idea of "dropping you into the middle of the movie" with no explanation of what is happening, which sucks for a short and again why I say Dogfight is the best- it has a clear story arc meant for a short.

Oh yeah, Cycle.. again, interesting idea, except it was not actually a cycle (since there's clearly a survivor at the end) and it made little sense in it's own logic, but it had a lot of neat concepts. If it were a short film of 20 minutes or even a full film it might have been better fleshed out.

Finally, the Japanese ones.... what the hell. The last one in particular was an obvious political satire that reminded me of the mindset of the terrible Battle Royale sequel that just went flying off the rails at 200mph. What an awful way to end your movie.

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Agreed.

'THEY'RE EATING HER THEN THEY'RE GONNA EAT ME OH MY GOD AHHH'-Troll 2

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My understanding of the Apocalypse one was that she was killing him slowly by poisoning him but because of the apocalypse, she had to bring the process forward. Not to spare him any pain but because she wanted to be the one that killed him. Some grim humor there.

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My understanding of the Apocalypse one was that she was killing him slowly by poisoning him but because of the apocalypse, she had to bring the process forward. Not to spare him any pain but because she wanted to be the one that killed him. Some grim humor there.


Exactly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2BKWx_0qK0

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There's no survivor in cycle- the first dude sees the blood then goes inside to his woman. He goes outside where he is sucked into the hole and dies. Second dude wakes up in the lawn, sees first dude with his woman and indirectly causes him to go outside. As second dude investigates, third dude kills him and shoves him into the vortex. As third dude washes it away he sees the blood and becomes first dude. everything is reset.

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[deleted]

How could you remotely like the robot baby sickness?

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