Friday, January 20, 2017

Delayed Reaction: The ABCs of Death 2

The Pitch: 26 more short horror stories from different directors.

If you recall, I saw the first ABCs of Death when I was pretty drunk and really don't remember it that well. It was fine. My one big issue with it is that it goes for laughs more than scares. For the sequel, I decided to do it right. All I had in me was water. I was awake, alert, and even taking notes as I went along. The result however was about the same. By its nature, this is an uneven film. I see that critically it was much higher praised than the first, which I don't get. They are about the same to me.
Since this is a crowded anthology with no actual connection, I think it's best to talk about the different stories individually. Not all of them. Just the one's I feel like mentioning.

A is for Amateur - The ending, when they found the corpse was really funny. More importantly, it set up the tone fore what was to come. This movie is more "black comedy" than horror.
E is for Equilibrium - A funny and unexpected twist on the idea of a woman coming between two friends.
M is for Masticate - I was already enjoying the slow motion story on its own. The "34 minutes earlier" cut to the man saying he'd do bath salts just underlined the point and gave it a good punch line.
O is for Ochlocracy - That was a funny take on the other side of zombie apocalypse. What if they really do find a cure?
Q is for Questionnaire - I like when the story is content with creating many questions and answering as few as possible.
R is for Roulette - Just a fantastic twist on the normal version of Russian Roulette. The "winner" gets the bullet, while the others get whatever is coming to them from upstairs.
S is for Split - What a great string of shorts. A house invasion turns into a revenge plot against a cheating husband.
V is for Vacation - Simple and effective. It reminded me a lot of the opening story from V/H/S. In this case, a prostitute becomes a crazed killer. Fun stuff.

26 stories is way too many, but I like the idea of getting a lot of different writers/directors involved. There needs to be more horror anthologies, plain and simple.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

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