The ABCs of Death 2

I will say that these ABC movies are great for some lite viewing.As i said in my review of the first one ,you get a chance to see an artist;s work ,and can keep track of the works that are out there to see.It also gives a person a red flag to a persons work that you may want to avoid in the future.Most of the shorts(each about 5 mins.) are well done ,as far as competent film making ,and production goes.I have a few new artists to follow ,and a few to avoid.Some of the stories are very cool,or very cool to watch(letter D,a personal fave ,cause this artists work is great),and others just had me shaking my head....(letter p )so ,to sum it up ,these are all new stories ,by all new filmmakers,doing what they did in part one.Telling stories,and showing us something worth watching.On that respect,they pulled it off again ,with style ,and flare.Worth a watch if you liked the first one.If this is all new to you ,the viewer ,go back and see the first one ,as this is not the kind of movie that you need to see the first one ,to follow the second.Good stuff,check it out.

ABCs of Death 2 revisits the idea of its predecessor of having 26 segments by 26 directors and is far more moderate and less creative.

ABCs of Death 2 is a anthology film featuring twenty six shorts about death. As the opening sequence explains the concept: "The following feature film was created by 26 directors from around the world. Each director was given a letter of the alphabet and asked to choose a word. They then created a short tale of death that related to their chosen word. They had complete artistic freedom regarding the content of their segments."

The entire approach of this horror film is intriguing and ambitiously risky. As with the original ABCs of Death, the directors enlisted to participate in the film are typically up-and-comers of the horror genre.

The film is exciting because those creating short segments have complete creative control and do not have to sacrifice their art for the sake of distributors and producers; a rarity in the film industry. Further, audiences are subjecting themselves to a wide array of subject matter ranging from the silly comedies to the stomach churning perverse. The mystery of the word and director only being revealed after the viewer has subjected themselves to the full three minute segment.

The first ABCs of Death was an experience. There was a nice range of types of shorts. Some were downright ridiculous, some were incredibly disturbing, some were scary and some were funny. Some segments were so odd the viewer begged for its ending in the hope the next one would be better F, Z; others were memorably fantastic D, Q, X and everywhere in-between.

The same can be said for ABCs of Death 2 but to a lesser extent. Overall the execution of the films on average are better but the outliers that represented the best and worse from its predecessor are significantly diminished in the second edition. ABCs of Death 2's segments are relatively safe and restrained, not nearly as creative, and impotently lacking satisfying conclusions.

While some were good, none are memorable enough to stick with me a few years later like the original. My favorites were E, J, M, V and Z and the worst, in my opinion were H, P, R. The ones I felt were good up until the ending were: L, K, Q . The ones I thought were sadly expected but not necessarily bad were: N, X.

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I must say, when I've learnt of the second chapter of this ABC Horror experiment, I was rather skeptic. The first film had some fine moments, but overall was simply a vulgar display of all things nauseating and a complete waste of a fine idea... So why should this one be any different?

Well, I'm happy to say that this second chapter is different enough to be worthy of a slight higher rating in my opinion. First and foremost, the opening music... Wow! Not since Fantomas' masterpiece in Rosemary's Baby have I heard such horrific intense use of "la la la". Even if you never intend on watching this, check out the theme song. Second, while still infected with gore and revolting scenes, more parts than the first film were artistic, creative and worthy. I was personally very happy to see Israeli filmmakers Keshales and Papushado (made famous by Rabies/Kalevet and Big Bad Wolves) in the letter F.

All in all, I am still disappointed. I believe both films have given way, way too much room to scenes that are nothing more than gore and filth, and I wish they hadn't. What a waste of excellent talent and an excellent idea... If you're a gore fan, by all means, watch both films one after the other, you're in for a treat...

A few of these films were pretty good. J, M, O, S,& V. They were creative, well written, or had a good twist. The rest were pretty meh. That's fine. I've seen enough short films. They're passion projects for aspiring film makers working to better their craft, and vent some creative juices. I can accept them well enough, appreciate the little nuggets of goodness that might shine through here and there, and appreciate the effort that went into making them, often a budget of little to nothing, as they made it in their free time.

"P-p-p-p is for Scary" was possibly the worst short film I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. How this ever made its way into this collection leaves me with just one of two conclusions. A: Purely through nepotism or bribery, or P: because there was no other film submitted for "P". If it was the latter, I would've hoped they just left it out. There were definitely some other bad ones in this collection, but this won the top prize of worst by a mile.

26 other directors with the total creative freedom granted to 26 other sick and crazy horror stories. Always for all tastes and for those who do not like some short films there are many others that can certainly like