ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Too much of everything

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I have not seen the first one to make comparisons, but I did enjoy the originality of many of the skits. There are 26 different comedy-horror episodes each using a letter of the alphabet. I gave myself 3 guesses for each episode, and in one instance gave myself credit for a derivation of the word. I managed to get 9 out of 26. B,V, and X were easy to guess. P is cleverly impossible. Some episodes are better than others. Some were not great, but enjoyed because of the uniqueness of the tale, something which lacks in modern horror.Guide: F-bombs and Nudity.

Like the first film, this is a very hit or miss horror anthology film where filmmakers from around the world (mostly who you've never heard of) made horror themed shorts based on one letter of the alphabet. Most of the shorts are pretty dull, not particularly clever, and most often seem to focus on just being gory (and consequentially pretty boring). However, none of them are longer than 10 minutes, so nothing really overstays its's welcome. The best entries were shorts that acted as if the audience had suddenly been plopped into the middle of a larger story already in progress, which were C is for Capital Punishment (a Shirley Jackson-like story about a mob seeking justice for a missing girl), I is for Invincible (an Evil Dead-like story about greedy family members trying unsuccessfully to kill off the monstrous family patriarch), O is for Ochlocracy (following a zombie apocalypse, a kangaroo court run by the living dead puts a living woman on trial for her crimes of zombie killing), R is for Roulette (a suspenseful game of backroom Russian roulette), and the very funny W is for Wish (a 1980s style He-Man-like toy commercial transports two boys into a gritty version of the fantasy toy world). There were a few self contained stories that were clever, such as F is for Falling (a two person drama about an Israeli paratrooper stuck in a tree who's discovered by an arab boy), M is for Masticate (a cleverly shot slow motion film about a crazed man running down a sidewalk with a funny punchline), and N is for Nexus (another cleverly edited short about a man on his way to see his girlfriend on Halloween). These good shorts were enough to balance out the bad ones and make the film worth watching.

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.

The second installment of the unusual anthology The ABCs of Death puts together another eclectic combination of filmmakers, themes and techniques. I think I liked this second film more than the first one, but it doesn't have the same extremes of grotesque subversion, or for the case, the same abysses of laziness or mediocrity. It would take too much space to talk about each one of the 26 short films, whose running time of 5 minutes or less results in a 125-minute film which never feels tiring due to the big variety of alternatives and focuses. Besides, if we are not liking a certain segment very much, we know it will end in a few minutes, and it will be replaced by other one, maybe with better luck. So, I will limit myself to mention the short films I liked the most, in alphabetical order: "B is for Badger", an interesting satire of the TV coverages which pretend to reflect the reality, even manipulating it for convenience; "D is for Deloused", an animated segment with a delirious imagination and a beautiful/repulsive visual style; "L is for Legacy", which allows us to meet an unusual culture; "N is for Nexus", quite an interesting work from director Larry Fessenden, experimenting with shapes and styles he hadn't previously employed in his filmography; "O is for Ochloracy", an ingenious segment which ignores the typical gore in order to present an innovative interpretation of the zombie invasion; "T is for Torture Porn", exactly what the title describes, but not like we expect to understand it; "U is for Utopia", a scathing satire of the obsession for physical perfection; "W is for Wish", a very entertaining display of violence and "retro" charm; and "Z is for Zygote", which is, in my opinion, the best one of all, because it's grotesque, disturbing and bloody, but with a solid emotional endorsement. There are many other entertaining segments, and fortunately, very few ones which aren't very satisfactory (I wouldn't say they are bad, but a bit weak or predictable). Nevertheless, my overall opinion of The ABCs of Death 2 is definitely positive, and I would like to see a third installment, as long as the same dynamism and variety is kept.