When The ABCs of Death first came out last year, I was curious to see what an ambitious horror anthology would look like. I don’t watch many short films but was eager to see how different genre directors from all over the world would approach the subject of death. The results were mixed (read my review) with varying degrees of quality, but the film was a success and thus Magnet Releasing pushed forward with a sequel and a new slate of directors.
For The ABCs of Death 2, the same rules applied. Each director(s) were assigned a letter, with that letter they could choose a word and create a short film about that word involving death. After the letters were assigned, the directors had complete artistic freedom and the results, similar to the first film, vary greatly, though I found this selection of shorts to be a little less impactful and much less horror oriented than expected. They were all genre related and overall were better, though thankfully there’s still some shorts that were completely F’d up.
Below is a breakdown of my thoughts on each short:
Amateur by Evan Katz (aka E.L. Katz) – This short followed a man preparing to go assassinate someone. The film opens up with the guy mentally walking through the events to come, being completely professional about it, and then when he goes to execute the plan things go very wrong. Initially I thought this short was ‘meh’, but after thinking about it more it’s actually pretty funny and clever. As mentioned above though, it doesn’t feel like something that would belong in a horror film.
Badger by Julian Barratt – This short follows a camera crew and their asshole boss/host of the show/documentary while doing a report about the disappearance of the badgers in an area that’s been polluted. While we are led to believe there are no badgers left, things change and it appears that there’s still one in the area, and he’s a violent sucker. This short was a mix of horror and comedy but I found it did absolutely nothing for me. It’s an easily forgettable short.
Capital Punishment by Julian Gilbey – This short was about a local community who claimed a man killed one of the local girls. Denying it all the way and asking for a trial, the community says that if he confesses they’ll give him a proper trial. Well, they lied and decide to take him out to the woods to execute him. The title fits the bill and the end is both a little sad and funny. It’s not a strong short but it’s not bad either.
Deloused by Robert Morgan – Probably the most fucked up short of the lot. I don’t know how to describe this claymation film except to say that it is a trippy and very weird experience. One of the best and more memorable shorts from this film.
Equilibrium by Alejandro Brugués – One of the funnier shorts of the anthology. This short focuses on two guys who are stranded on an island. They’re best friends and are getting by as best they can. Suddenly, an attractive woman washes up on shore and everything falls out of order. The two get start to get jealous in an attempt to compete for the girl’s affection and things roll from there. What happens in the end is the greatest kicker and gave me a good chuckle.
Falling by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado – This short focuses on a young Palestinian fighter who finds a female Israeli soldier stuck in a tree because she can’ get out of her parachute. She tries to convince the guy to let her live and cut her free. He cuts her free, she falls to the ground, breaks her leg and then something happens to the boy. This short is certainly political in nature and it was easy to tell who made it without having to see the name. While I love these directors this short did absolutely nothing for me and ends up being one of the weakest of the movie.
Grandad by Jim Hosking – An interesting short, Grandad focuses on an asshole guy that lives with his Grandfather. Eventually we see that the Grandad has been sleeping in the same bed as him and starts to dress and act exactly like him, throwing the youngin off completely. As with all these shorts, things go crazy and someone dies. I’d say this was a middle-of-the-road short for the film.
Head Games by Bill Plympton – This animated short film was another very weird one. It was basically a man and a wo
man and their thoughts battling each other but it all was portrayed in this crazy style that mutilated the bodies of both people. It’s a tough one to describe on paper but while the idea was cool, I still can’t decide if it was actually a good short or not.
Invincible by Erik Matti – This Spanish short was about a group of siblings trying to kill their 120 year old mother who just won’t die. They light her on fire and cut her head off, among other things, and she just won’t die. All they want is to get their inheritance and she’s the only road block. I got a good kick out of this short and thought it was a fun one to watch.
Jesus by Dennison Ramalho – This short is about a gay man kidnapped by his own father and given an exorcism in order to save his soul only to find out that he isn’t the demon. I’m not sure where I stand on this short, unlike some of the others this one has some social commentary going on which I appreciate even if it did initially go over my head. It’s weird, it’s a little political, it isn’t for everyone, but it says a lot about how this director feels about religion.
Knell by Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper – Knell is one of those shorts that keeps things ambigious and interesting. The short opens with a mysterious orb appearing, but once it appears it has a disastrous effect on the residents of the nearby apartment building, they start killing each other. Entering a panic, this teenage girl locks up her door but blood starts entering her apartment and things get weirder from there. I’m not entirely clear on what to make of the ending, which is done on purpose, but this is a cool short that could very well play out as a sweet feature film.
Legacy by Lancelot Imasuen – This short is about a man in a remote village that is wrongly accused of a crime and is thus sacrificed. Then that man comes back to life and turns into some sort of rat monster, going around killing the people that wronged him. There are some sweet kills in this short but other than that it isn’t that clear even if it seems very simple.
Masticate by Robert Boocheck – A short that follows a guy running angrily down a street wearing only piss stained underwear. He runs around, tackles and attacks people, eventually biting one of them. You then question if he’s a zombie. All of this happens in slow motion until we cut to a flash back scene that’s back to normal speed and ends up being a great punchline to everything you witnessed prior to that. The brilliant punchline makes up for the strangeness of the rest of the short. Definitely a fun one.
Nexus by Larry Fessenden – A short about a guy and a girl who are meeting up for their Halloween activities and the small trivial events that culminate into disaster. This isn’t as much a freaky horror as it is about melancholy and the horror associated with that. You can read what’s going to happen like a book but you’re eager to see how it all plays out and how the tiny events lead to tragedy. A well done short film.
Ochlocracy (mob rule) by Hajime Ohata – A fascinating twist on the zombie genre where a vaccine is created to bring the zombies back to the human realm, even after death. This short follows a woman being put on trial by former zombies (or current zombies) for her crime of murder. The judge is a “cured’ zombie, as is the audience, but there is still a bit of skepticism. You think all is going to work out for the woman and then her dead daughter shows up and throws a wrench in the plan. I really liked this one.
P is for P-P-P-P SCARY! By Todd Rohal – Very much a Todd Rohal film, this live-action short about a group of bumbling and stuttering convicts with big noses who just escaped a prison feels like a cartoon that I’d watch on Saturday morning back in the late 80s/early 90s. These guys wander around in the dark and soon find a random man sitting by himself. Things happen and each time the light turns off and then on, that man has a weird face change. Eventually the prisoners begin to disappear. Much like Rohal’s The Catechism Cataclysm, this short starts out entertaining and then gets inexplicably weird. Not sure what to make of it but I got a laugh or two from it, couldn’t tell you if it’s good or not though, probably leaning towards below average.
Questionnaire by Rodney Ascher – Gory in a pleasant way due to the music and story, Ascher’s short is about a guy who goes takes an intelligence test which is really a scientific questionnaire for a group of scientists trying to do things that would be considered illegal. I dug this short and enjoyed everything about it.
Roulette by Marvin Kren – A period piece focused on three people playing Russian roulette. We have no idea why they’re playing but the game takes a tragic turn leaving someone dead, as expected. I didn’t understand the point of this one, it felt lazy and unoriginal, especially when we’re left without understanding why any of this went down.
Split by Juan Martinez Moreno – This is a clever, home invasion thriller that I’d rather not discuss. It’s one of the best shorts in the film even if it’s more of a thriller than a horror. All I’ll say about the plot is that while away, a husband calls his wife at home and someone breaks into the house while he’s on the phone with only one thing on her mind, to kill the wife.
Torture Porn by Jen and Sylvia Soska – This is the kind of short I was hoping to see when watching this film. Messed up, slightly exploitative, and original. The name sounds like it says it all but it’s a clever twist and what actually goes down in this tale of a creepy porn director and his auditioning star. He pushes her and pushes her until her vagina attacks him and things get crazy. Disturbing and weirdly fun, you can always count on the Soska Sisters to be inventive.
Utopia by Vincenzo Natali – This polished, futuristic take on the word Utopia focuses on an average, overweight man trying to make it in a world in which only beautiful people exist. One slip up and he’s done for. I saw this short as an interesting take on our society even if it is far from the Utopia showcased in this film. A nifty short and one that is vastly different from the others in this anthology.
Vacation by Jerome Sable – This segment is about a guy on vacation who takes some time to Skype with his girlfriend to tell her everything is going fine. Then his buddy comes out onto the deck and turns his asshole-mode into full throttle, showing off the drugs, alcohol and prostitutes in their room, making his friend look like a liar as he’s pleading him to stop. Things get taken to the next level when one of the prostitutes gets hit during the commotion of the two friends. This segment is wacked and I loved it, it was disturbing yet was creative in its approach to filming, the laptop camera being the source of all the footage was a win in my book. The short itself reminded me a bit of Tim Tjahjanto’s segment in V/H/S/2 in terms of creepiness, and that was a wild one.
Wish by Steven Kostanski – I thought this short was awesome. Remember when you were a kid and there were so many awesome toy commercials that you wished you could go play in that world? We’ll that’s what this short does but the kids in this dream world get much more than they bargained for. Not everything is as sweet when you’re pulled into the real world. Probably my favorite segment of the film.
Xylophone by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo – A disturbing little short, this film focuses on a babysitter and the xylophone playing child that she’s watching over. I can’t say much else because it’ll give it away but what I can say is that this babysitter is a bit twisted. This short certainly was going for shock value but that shock was very temporary and didn’t really do much to save this film from being anything more than average.
Youth by Soichi Umezawa – We’ve all been there as kids, sitting at a table, pissed off at our various family members for whatever reason, imagining horrible things happening to them, hopefully only in the heat of the moment. That’s the focus of this Japanese short where everything this suicidal teenage girl thinks/yells ends up playing out on screen. It’s an insane, fun, and incredibly B-rated Japanese horror short that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Zygote by Chris Nash –This short is about a pregnant woman who is told by her husband that she can’t have the child until he returns home. He leaves her with some sort of herb/medicine that helps delay the birth and she takes it to heart. Fast forward years and her belly is the size of a pre-teen, maybe older, and the child can talk. I won’t say anymore but suffice to say this was a wonderfully weird and messed up short that was an ideal choice to close out the film and end it on a horror high.
Though containing an eclectic bunch of shorts, The ABCs of Death 2 may be only slightly better than the first, but felt much less horror oriented than expected. The horror that I expected, gruesome kills but not murder porn, started showing up in the second half of the film which helped make it a much more fitting feature for October than the first half. While an improvement, The ABCs of Death 2 fails to make a statement and isn’t something you’re required to hunt down and watch right away.
Rating: Marginally better than the first, it’s a less traditional horror film than expected and one that I’d rather watch on Netflix than in an expensive cinema (5.5/10)
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