Michael Ledo 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.

Foreverisacastironmess Surprised that this has so few reviews.. I thought this was a very decent collection of macabre short films that mostly focus on monsters and death, and there's a terrific variety to the overlong cavalcade of terror, with some of them being comedic, dead serious, or incomprehensibly bizarre. A lot are enjoyable, not too many are exactly great, but to me not many are downright awful either..very mixed bag indeed! I love the multicultural aspect and how you get to experience different kinds of experimental and artistic approaches to the horror. It's a silly nitpick really but like with the original, one of the real downsides is that it gradually becomes quite the slog to watch if you're planning on sitting through the whole thing with one little tale endlessly going into another, and by the end you're fairly itching for it to wrap the hell up already! I'm only talking about the shorts that I was most impressed by, I'll leave the negativity to the other reviews. "D is For Deloused." Oh what a hideously beautiful work of art, it was so mesmeringly grotesque with all those bug things consuming the fleshy man-like thing and dissolving and spawning new larval crawling filth...oh I just loved it, it's so good! Robert Morgan is so skilled and his highly distinctive brand of animation is so absorbing that, if you're like me, you won't even care that you have no idea what's going on. Yeah that was right up my alley, I dug it! "G is For Grandad." To my way of thinking this grungy coarse tale of an equally revolting granddad and grandson who hate each other's guts is more complex than it first seems, because everything about it from the decor to how the horrible people look and sound feels purposefully designed to be as off-putting and hilarious awkward and vile as possible, and in its own way it's quite the artfully done little piece and it certainly got under my skin! "H is For Head games." I could see how some might not take to this one as it's not even really horror, it's a kaleidoscopic visual metaphor of a 'stormy' relationship, or a very passionate kiss! I sometimes enjoy different kinds of animation, and I thought that one was very fun and eye catching from start to finish. "J is For Jesus" I loved and found quite powerful and moving for how brutal it was. "N is for Nexus." While it could have done with just a little more punch to its conclusion, I thought this cleverly constructed little Halloween treat about people ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time at a specific moment was quite sharply directed and nicely suspenseful, and at the end Frankenstein is dead, and she becomes a macabre screaming Bride of death for real - which I found very cool! "O is for Ochlocracy." I found this loony satire of an undead kangaroo court with people being charged harshly by the 'cured' zombies for the zombies that they had to kill to defend themselves really funny and entertaining, and even a little poignant as the woman is sentenced to death by her own reformed zombie daughter who doesn't forgive her... "V is for Vacation." I was impressed by how brutal this found footage type offering of two guys in a foreign country who meet their doom at the hands of a mad prostitute was, I found it to be one of the more realistically disturbing and unnerving stories. "W is for Wish." Rather loved this madly epic and colourful romp of a child's fantasy turned into something twisted and weird in which two kids get sucked into the 80's Castle Grayskull type playset of their favourite action figures and find that it's not quite as rosy fun and black and white as they look from their side, it was a neat imaginative idea that could make for a cool movie, and it was creepy too, with one of the poor young boys being unceremoniously vaporised and He-Man being a pervert! "U is for Utopia" was I thought a very scary idea of a future society of genetically perfect people in which the ugly are immediately burned from existence on sight! What would such a 'paradise' ever be truly worth if it was built on such a nightmare? "Y is for Youth" I loved a lot, I found it to be a jaw-dropping explosion of insanely bizarre and creative metaphorical imagery, it had a giant burger monster, gross maggot hand, an electric guitar erupting from a guy's head, a French fry vacuum cleaner, it was so super freaky but it sure had a lot of energy and was one of the few shorts that ended on am absurdly uplifting note - hell yeah!!! "Z is for Zygote." This was the real gem of the movie and ended it on a very strong and satisfying note that kind of enriches the whole collective tone of the film by itself. It raised the gag factor by a mile and was easily capable of causing anyone's gorge to rise! The world of Zygote was so sharply realised and darkly rich that it felt like there could have been an entire picture made of it. It's repulsive on multiple levels as a teenage fetus forcibly takes over her mother's skin from within after ejecting out all the bones and organs in an astonishing display of gruesome body horror effects... It's an amazingly twisted tale that's so brilliantly visceral and thematically perverse and strange, you'd have to be made of stone not to have some kind of reaction to it! In the girl's defence she never knew what murder or a father was as up to that point she'd lived her existence inside a hideously distended womb! So no classic but a fun and exhaustive horror compilation horror, on repeated viewings you may benefit more from simply watching the chapters that you do like! See ya x

brando647 The first ABCS OF DEATH was a fun little experiment in short-form horror storytelling. Now the producers have returned with another 26 teams of filmmakers for a second lesson in blood, guts, and often laughs. I was pretty keen on the first one despite its weaknesses so I was more than happy to settle in for another round. For the unfamiliar, THE ABCS OF DEATH assembles horror filmmakers from around the world, gives them a budget, and assigns a letter of the alphabet around which they create a short film. To be honest, I actually didn't like this one when I first watched it. I thought it relied too heavily on shock value to get reactions, but a second viewing helped me realize I was applying my disgust for one or two particular shorts against the film as a whole. That's not fair, as there is actually a lot of good stuff here.THE GOOD: A, E, F, G, M, O, S, V, W, Y, and ZAs usual, I tended to love the crazier shorts the best. "Grandad" and "Masticate" were some of the funniest segments, but the honor for most insane goes to "Wish", where a couple of young boys are sucked into the world of an 80s era toy commercial (in the vein of He-Man) and realize it's not so fun anymore. The cheesy costumes and production design are perfect and the ending is equal parts funny and unsettling. "Amateur", "Equilibrium", and "Ochlocracy" get their share of laughs with "Equilibrium" earning some bonus points for creativity in camera blocking and choreography during an extended camera take. And then some of the filmmakers chose to go a more serious route. "Falling" is the simple tale of an Israeli paratrooper whose chute got caught in a tree and she's left at the mercy of a young Palestinian boy, injecting a bit of a social commentary. "Split" is one of the more brutal, as a man speaks with his wife over the phone during particularly punishing home invasion where we're reminded "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".THE "BAD": …That's not really fair. I wouldn't go so far as to call any of these bad, necessarily. The collection has its low points, as any anthology is bound to. Some of them just weren't as memorable. "Nexus", "Knell", and "Utopia" were all well done but I didn't think they were on par with a lot of the stronger material. Really, I'd have loved "Knell" if I understood what it was going for. The "commentary" track was none too helpful but added some extra uneasiness with it's bizarre…what was it? Chant? Poem? I don't know but it probably would've been better if it'd been used as the main audio track for the short. I still wouldn't know what was going on, but it added an extra feeling of unease to an already strange short. I should also mention "P-P-P-P-SCARY!" to this section but…as completely out of place as it felt…I don't hate it. It's…weird…and it's not scary, but it's unique. Kudos for that.THE UGLY: D and X"Deloused" is the most nauseating segment in the entire film. That's isn't necessarily a complaint. It's a surreal stop-motion segment with some of the most hideous puppetry I've seen. Keep in mind I don't mean to say the puppets or design were lame or amateur; I mean they were the stuff of nightmares. Its hellish imagery ensures that it stands out against the other segments and guarantees you won't forget it. Meanwhile, "Xylophone" is the one segment I'd love to forget. After a second viewing, I realized this was the segment that painted the movie in a bad light for me. I'm not a fan of child death in film for the sole purpose of shock value. "Split" and "Wish" also involve child death/murder but neither is anywhere as gratuitous. This might not bother others, and that's cool, but it made me ill and I could've done without it.By the power of these 26 filmmakers combined, THE ABCS OF DEATH 2 is ultimately a stronger film than the first. There was a lot of really cool stuff here and it gives attention to aspiring horror filmmakers that have some awesome talent, and hopefully that attention leads to some bigger opportunities in the future. These movies provide a showcase for talent that might not get the coverage that the big studio films relish in, and I'm open for another round if the producers keep this franchise going.

gridoon2018 Let's get down to business:A - A great start. It cleverly contrasts the glamorous fantasy with the harsh reality in the life of a professional assassin, and has a terrific ironic payoff, to boot. ***1/2B - A little too much shaky cam, but a funny ending makes it worth it. ***C - Gruesome and brutal miscarriage of justice. ***D - Great claymation, but I did not understand the "story" at all. **1/2 E - Imaginative direction, WTF ending. **1/2F - Well-done, sad tale, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (!) The woman in this one gives one of the strongest performances in the entire film. **1/2 G - The first complete dud. Ugly and disgusting, and not in a good way, either. Ugh! 0H - A curious little animation piece. **I - An one-joke premise (old matriarch won't die no matter how many times her inheritors "kill" her) that can barely sustain even three minutes of running time! *1/2J - A disturbing, effective anti gay-intolerance parable, though I don't quite "get" the title (J is for Jesus). **1/2 K - Artistically made, with a beautiful leading lady and hypnotic imagery, but also a nonsensical story. **1/2L - Poorly put together and disjointed. *1/2M - Hard to believe THIS was voted the best entry in the long-running open-for-public competition that was held for choosing who would get to do this particular letter. *1/2 N - A creative N.Y. love story, with a macabre end. **1/2 O - Sounds better than it plays (zombies judge and condemn people to death for killing....zombies!). **P - Awful sub-Three Stooges "comedy", though slightly more bearable than "G" above. 1/2 Q - Smart and funny. In America, can you marry your widow's sister? ***R - Very suspenseful, but a frustratingly incomplete ending. Probably the short most in need of expansion. **1/2 S - Good use of the split screen(s), some unexpected stings in the tail of this tale. ***T - A disappointing throwaway, I expected more from the Soska Sisters. *1/2U - One of the best entries. Eloquently tells a complete story in three minutes - without any dialogue! ***V - A bold and creative technical experiment - largely successful. ***W - Wickedly funny and thoroughly perverse (wait till you see "Fantasy Man"!) ***X - Far from the most graphic, but probably the most extreme and sickening of the shorts, in terms of what happens in it. **Y - Trademark Japanese wackiness - but with a point! **1/2 Z - Astonishingly gruesome "body horror", for the strongest stomachs only. Others might be advised to finish the movie five minutes earlier. **On the whole, "ABCs of Death 2" improves upon its predecessor; the production values / special effects / camera work are superior, there are a couple of shorts that surpass any of those in the first film, and only two - G and P - out of the 26 are completely skip-worthy, IMO.