Sometimes I have the displeasure of discussing films that have less than a coherent story and it troubles me because then I’m left with the arduous task of trying to figure out where all the disconnected pieces of the story I witnessed actually failed. Here however, I have a series of 26 completely separate short films all centred around death directed by 27 (one of the shorts by 2 directors) different horror directors across the world and presented one after another with no real through line to connect them together.

As you can expect, if I were doing a medley review of 26 random movies, there’s a few great shorts, a lot of okay shorts and a number of them that fall by the wayside. With my predisposition to disliking horror films in general though I’m surprised by the number of shorts that I actually enjoyed. Here are some of the more notable shorts for me:

A  (dir. Nacho Vigalondo); here we have a short that smartly disguises itself as we revel in some gory violence.

B (dir. Adrian Garcia Bogliano); the basics of horror comes in bedtime stories and ohh is this one great.

D (dir. Marcel Sarmiento); a visceral moment through slowmo that really got me even though there isn’t much meat there.

F (dir. Noboru Iguchi); I’m a sucker for weird Japanese things and this is very much that… where is sense? Nowhere.

H (dir. Thomas Malling); I don’t even know how to describe this one… I’m guessing if you’re a ‘furry’ you’ll enjoy this one. It’s just so odd and out there that you have to love it for being it’s own thing, like how we all adore Wes Anderson for refusing to not be him.

J (dir. Yudai Yamaguchi); a messed up crazed look at traditional Japanese honour suicides (hara kiri), but so funny.

L (dir. Tim Tjahjanto); probably one of the least attractive (pun intended) short in how it makes you feel horrible for “enjoying” it in whatever form. So gruesome though.

S (dir. Jake West); just like H I love how weird it gets but unlike H it brings it back to a reality. Feels less horror madness but rather a more ‘normal’ storytelling that makes it stand out from the rest of the film.

T (dir. Lee Hardcastle); this short was stop motion animated (the only one that was) and at this point we’re just looking for something to make your short stand out and it did. Added to that fact that it’s really freaky placing us back in the shoes of a child (like B does) with how irrational fears drive us.

V (dir. Kaare Andrews); wow… just wow to the weird.

Z (dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura); I mentioned my love for weird Japanese things… this one goes even further than F and J ever did, but I’m still ok with that.

I’ve seen nothing but praise for O and Q, but those shorts did nothing for me. O was well shot but didn’t quite scare me I guess.

Regardless I think if you were one of those people who thought V/H/S was great, not only are you wrong, but this is so much better. Go and watch it.