The ABCs of Death 2

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 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.

I liked the original ABCs of Death. I loved the idea, and have seen quite a few of the directors' work. Unfortunately, it seems some of the directors approached didn't get the memo, and gave very little effort in their submissions. G for Gravity and M for Miscarriage spring to mind. Then you have your wild/crazy efforts like F,J,W and Z which I wasted minutes of my life watching.

The good news is that the ABCs of Death 2 is far more consistent in the quality. It starts strong with 'A' by E.L.Katz, an amusing tale of a hit-gone-wrong (or has it?) and carried on with great gusto and a well-paced mix of both fun ('B') and dread ('C' and 'D'). In fact, by the time you get to 'Q' during the second half of the film, the quality is almost totally improved and maintains a high level until the film ends.

And what an ending.

'Z' is not just (in my humble opinion) the best short film of the bunch, but also one of the best short films I've ever seen. I wouldn't eat during this one if I were you, and I'd turn all the lights out as well. Be prepared to be thoroughly shocked. It's not quite as disgusting as 'L for Libido' from the first film (my favourite short of that bunch), but is a quite unique take on motherhood and features some quite remarkable, and disgusting, special effects, all of which I think I believe were done by the director in his own living room!

I'll summarise the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, so to speak:

The Great: AZ The very Good: BCFJKRSV The OK: DEGHIMNOQTUWXY The downright ugly: LP

So for your money, you get 2 excellent shorts, 2 awful ones, and the rest are all decent. That's a pretty good run for an anthology-style film like this, I think. :)

Where do i even start? Since the film itself never starts let alone finishes. Abc's of death 2 attempts to avoid all horror film cliché's but somehow manages to create new ones. The film is disgusting, a series of events that are so poorly executed by its lazy filming techniques and its embarrassingly low budget. The acting is horrific there were literally no effort put into this film which leaves me confused on how it eve made it to the big screen. Although i do have to admit it made slight improvements compared to the first film, which is one of my all time hated movies. The film was made for its shock factor as if it was a competition on which skit was capable of creating the most disgusting. You might as well stick to the human centipede franchise.

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.