film

ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

---

26 horror vignettes crammed into 2 hours? That’s right, and get this – it’s better than the first one.

---

Right on the heels of VHS: Viral, I watched ABCs of Death 2. Then after that I went back and watched the first The ABCs of Death. It turns out that this second installment is better in almost every way. There’s a more cohesive vision for the work as a whole, far less duds, and an overall higher quality of storytelling and filmmaking. If you saw the first one and hated it, well, it might be worth your time to give the sequel a shot.

Note: In order to effectively discuss this film, it’s impossible not to give away important plot points. If you’re planning on watching ABCs of Death 2 and want it all to remain a complete surprise, you may want to hit the brakes now and come back when it’s fresh in your mind.

Those of you familiar with the first entry will recognize the format. Here we have 26 stories, each with a title based on one of the letters of the alphabet. Obviously these are very short, we’re talking a runtime of about 4 minutes per story. I’ve divided them up based on what I thought of them – The Best, Good, Okay, Bad, and The Worst.

The Best

What does it mean to be “the best”?  Well, it’s actually a pretty steep standard.  To be the best in an anthology setting, it has to play to the strengths of the format.  In addition to being interesting, meaningful, and well-made, it also has to properly contain itself in its short running time.  This means having a beginning, middle, and end.  This means understanding what is happening, why it’s happening, and what is likely to happen  – no ambiguity in the wrong places – in order words, a complete story.  Only a couple of shorts really match this criteria, but it’s worth singling them out for their excellence.

D is for Deloused

Creepy, disgusting stop-motion animation at its best.  What I think is most fascinating about D is that it’s surrealism inside of surrealism.  The premise is simple: a condemned “man” gets revenge on his executioners with the help of a “bug” that one of the executioners crushed.

Z is for Zygote

A fine body horror piece, Z explores a mother’s feeling of abandonment over a growing child as well as the cyclical nature of this abandonment.  After holding her child in for 13 years, she runs out of “medicine” to abate birth.  But instead of being born, the child eviscerates its mother and takes over the skin, only to be confronted by the “father,” who is eager to try again.  It’s a full dose of weird with a nice smattering of the macabre, yet it also uses itself to make a meaningful observation on the inability of parents to let their children go.

The Good

Simple as it might sound, the good ones are comprised of everything that was competently made and entertaining on some level.  They fall short of greatness for a number of reasons, but mostly because they fail to make the most efficient use of the format.  I still regard these as above average and well worth repeated viewings.

H is for Head Games

A lot of viewers relegate this animated short as a lower tier “story,” but I like it.  Not only is the animation clever (eyeballs as machine guns, for instance), but I think that in a rather blunt way it emphasizes the struggles of a relationship, both personal and circumstantial.

O is for Ochlocracy

This one had an excellent story behind it; I wish the finished product had taken itself a little more seriously and revealed a few more important details regarding the backstory.  At some point, the world has been overrun with zombies.  However, a sort of cure was developed though it seems to leave the zombies in somewhat of a still-undead state (this is the part that isn’t made totally clear, but obviously they aren’t simply made into “normal humans” again).  These “cured zombies” have set up courts where they routinely execute the living for their “crimes.”  The twist?  Upon executing one such woman, they then create another “strain” of zombie, presumably more vicious than the originals.  I’m not sure that the courtroom was the best vehicle, but there’s a great story lurking underneath.

R is for Roulette

This one almost made the best list; if only it were a little more fully formed.  What starts off as a seemingly cruel game of Russian Roulette is soon revealed to be the opposite.  Death by gun is preferable, as zombie-like creatures close in and the humans have but a single bullet at their disposal.  It’s got the greatest level of characterization, and a twist that is infinitely better than most twists.

S is for Split

S is a well done piece with a solid impact, though it feels a little too much like it was plucked out of the climax of a movie.  A decent bit of film, but a little lacking when it comes to existing as a self-contained story.

V is for Vacation

Another well done piece that falls into the same trappings as S.  We get a solid scene, but again, it feels like it’s been lifted from a larger, more purposeful context.  Worth seeing, it just feels like it’s part of a larger story instead of a story unto itself.

W is for Wish

Here we have what I like to think is an awesome commentary on the stories and environs that surrounding the marketing of certain toys.  Ostensibly a reference to He-Man in the short’s toyline, it shows us how terrifying these fantasy worlds would be if they actually existed.  Beyond that, there’s some great visual work here, from the set design, to the costumes, and even the special effects.  This is probably the best looking short, or at least on par with D.  The only thing that threw me off is that the writer and/or director failed to craft the essential “why is this happening;” the kids randomly show up, and then the short seems to randomly end.

The Okay

The next round includes shorts that are watchable and at least somewhat entertaining, but either lack clear meaning or are too cerebral/abstract for their own good.  Basically, these don’t suck, but they aren’t very memorable, nor do they leave much of an impression on any level, visceral or otherwise.

A is for Amateur

Popular among viewers, though it failed to grab me.  Hitman goes on mission to kill guy, hitman fails and dies in airducts.  Later when investigating the smell, maintenance man opens duct, dead assassin falls out, gun goes off, kills drug dealer.  It’s done well enough, but it feels more like the punchline to a joke than an actual story.

C is for Capital Punishment

This short aims to build tension, but never goes anywhere with it, instead preferring to espouse the belief that innocents are executed just a few too many times.  It carries some dramatic potential, but ironically loses focus while trying to drive home the point.

K is for Knell

I can recognize some degree of artistic vision here…it’s just hard to tell exactly what that vision is.  I love the imagery of the strange liquid/orb/thing turning the inhabitant of a building into a bunch of killers, I just don’t understand what the director was driving at or striving for.  Creepy and atmospheric, but borderline nonsensical.

M is for Masticate

Blatantly playing off the 2012 “Miami Cannibal Attack” where “bath salts” designer drugs were alleged to be a factor early on, said bath salts turn a man into a ravenous zombie somewhere in the span of 34 minutes.  From a technical standpoint, the filmmaking is top notch, especially the slow motion and the unfolding of the scene.  However, there isn’t much of a story here: man turns into zombie, attacks a guy, gets shot in the head, the end, so I’m not sure what we’re supposed to take away from this one, aside from it being a darkly comic nod to the aforementioned attack.

Q is for Questionnaire

It was fun watching this one come together, like a sort of mini-mystery.  It’s a little bit eerie seeing that the man is (unknowingly) being interviewed for the chance to have his brain transplanted into an ape, but like most others here in the okay camp, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose.  We get an engaging what, but never the why to provide any sort of impact.

T is for Torture Porn

An objectified and borderline abused model/actress suddenly turns the tables on “her” misogynistic film crew, proceeding to grow tentacles from several orifices with which she rapes and maims the men with.  It’s a clever play on “torture porn,” unfortunately there’s pretty much zero story happening.

Y is for Youth

One of the more abstract pieces in the anthology, it’s also one of the most visceral.  Forgiving the foreign language aspect for a moment, a girl violently fantasizes about killing her family, which apparently regard her as little more than a slave.  She imagines a particularly gruesome death for her family member preoccupied with the guitar, and a rather humorous one aimed at her junk food loving mother.  This short didn’t have much of a point either, though I must at some level concede to its abundant creativity.

The Bad

Yes, here we are at the top of the below average heap.  Most of these are bad for different reasons, yet the one thing nearly all of them have in common is a failure to entertain a captivate.  Is it boring?  Yes?  Simple as that.

B is for Badger

This short isn’t as pointless as some others I’ll be touching on soon.  The concept may be played out – irradiated, mutated animals – but it is solid, and enough to craft a story around.  Sadly, this doesn’t really go anywhere.  Cocky guy won’t listen to the crew who just had the boom mic eaten, and as predicted, he’s sucked into a hole, bisected laterally (off screen), and then thrown back onscreen.  It would’ve been nice if we’d actually seen the monsters (we don’t even get so much as a shadow or the glimpse of a paw), but the nail in the coffin was the doomed character’s upper half gurgling, “Cut!” for the still-recording camera.

F is for Falling

An uninspired tale where an Israeli paratrooper stuck in a tree attempts to prolong her life when faced with an Arab gang member.  It really seemed like the director was going for some masterful psychological set up, but instead, it fizzles into absolutely nothing as random chance ruins both their chances at a “happy” (maybe “preferable” is the better word) ending.

J is for Jesus

This is probably the most confusing and abstract short in the series.  It starts off with a father killing his gay son’s lover, before turning into a vengeful ghost story.  So far so good (or at least, not that bad) – the problems start when multiple quick cuts are used, interspersed with possibly real and possibly unreal imagery.  The whole thing falls into a mess very quickly, which is kind of a shame.  There is some great imagery involved, but it’s wasted because it fails to make any sense. At all.

N is for Nexus

Yet another well shot piece with little to no meaning or purpose.  We follow a number of characters on Halloween as they proceed to an inevitable “convergence.”  Some people die.  What’s the point?  I don’t know.  I’m guessing there’s a take home message about fate or something, but otherwise it sounds like little more than a tragic mishap on the front page of a newspaper.

U is for Utopia

Ok, a world ruled by the beautiful people, where those that don’t exist within the perfect genetic spectrum are summarily and publicly executed for entertainment…got all that…but what’s the point?  Where’s the morale of the story?  Where is the “horror within each of us” that we’re forced to face?

X is for Xylophone

A grisly, graphic piece involving a thoroughly obliterated little girl.  Disturbing, but 100% pointless.

The Worst

Now we get into the few duds of the anthology.  These are just plain awful – bad concept, bad execution, bad filmmaking.

E is for Equilibrium

This plays out like a bad beer commercial.  Two dudes on a beach come into conflict about a woman who washes up.  Eventually, instead of choosing rescue, or sex with a woman for that matter, they kill the babe and petition potential rescues to “Send Beer.”  Nothing redeeming to behold.

G is for Grandad

G is a strangely disturbing piece that amounts to little more than a grandad killing his grandson for “cramping his style” during his year long stay…and calling him a wanker.  Concordantly, the grandfather has been sleeping “under” the grandson in a depression in the mattress, while also adopting his style of dress of mannerisms.  What one has to do with the other is completely inexplicable, but it seems that the entire point of the shot was to boil down to one moment where the grandad insists that he can’t be called a “wanker,” because he has nothing to “wank”…and at this juncture he removes his pants to show the audience a crotch with a scrotum, yet without penis.  Not only does it not make any sense, but the implications of incest and rape on top of a bad joke with an even worse sight gag easily single this out as one of the most useless pieces of the anthology.

I is for Invincible

You’d think it’d be easy to get a point out in a few minutes, but here’s another story that manages to be as confusing as possible.  A family tries desperately to kill their mother, presumably in the hopes of “inheriting” some kind of trinket she possesses within her mouth that makes her invincible.  In the right hands maybe this could’ve made a good story, yet here it was among the poorest executed of all 26 shorts.

L is for Legacy

I think L ties with the following short as my personal “absolute worst.”  Here, an African tribe accidentally summons a demon that kills some people.  Big whoop.  This is a scene that could’ve been lifted straight from any one of hundreds of other horror movies – slashers, creature flicks, malevolent ghosts – you name it.  A thing walks around and kills people.  Moreover, the special effects are dubious in the sense that they can hardly be called “special” or “effects.”  Most importantly, there’s no sense of underlying meaning, artistic drive, or plain old relevance here.  Lazy, boring, uninspired, and unoriginal; yep, that sums it up nicely.

P is for P-P-P-P SCARY!

I, along with 99% of other viewers, didn’t get this one at all.  Obviously it’s an homage to a different era of television, film, and entertainment, vaguely reminiscent of the 3 Stooges.  The exact reference(s), however, are totally lost on me.  As such, I can’t even begin to make sense of P.  I don’t know what’s happening, how I should be interpreting the onscreen events, or what the dialog is driving at.  I don’t doubt that there is some artistic value tucked away in here for the right person to discover, but I ain’t one of those people, and accordingly, P is not only a mess, but a boring as hell mess.

Well, there’s my take on ABCs of Death 2.  I know I may not have had glowing things to say about all of the stories, but they really are decent by horror anthology standards, and leaps and bounds beyond the stories told on its predecessor, which ranged from the incomprehensible to the painfully mundane.  Maybe I’ll try sticking them on a list in the near future…

I hesitate to hastily recommend ABCs of Death 2 to just any old horror fan, but for those that dig the mysterious nature of short-form horror – The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside – this might be right up your alley.

Have you seen ABCs of Death 2?  Or the first ABCs of Death?  Which letters/stories were your favorite?  Which ones were your least favorites?  Let us know below!

Written by The Cubist