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

As the title of this review says, I was not expecting much from this anthology, but I actually found the majority of the shorts to at least be vaguely interesting. A lot of the shorts were more comedic than I was expecting, but I tend to enjoy horror-comedy more than straight horror so it was perfect for me and everyone who also enjoys some goofy moments in the films they watch. Of course, a handful of shorts were downright terrible, but since each piece is so short, it's fairly easy to overlook the negatives. I thought I would talk more in depth about my favorite and least favorite shorts. ***Here's where potential spoilers start***FAVS: A is for Amateur - now this short is not scary at all, but it was really well executed and had the perfect touch of humor. This was a really great way to start the film. D is for Deloused - this section was absolutely horrifying. It was done with Stop motion puppets, which made it all the more creepy. It really appeals to very human and basic fears, like bugs and becoming disfigured. This was the scariest of the shorts. J is for Jesus - I found this to be one of the more intelligent shorts that was the story of the comeuppance of two homophobic men torturing a gay man in the name of Jesus. The torture is freaky, but I really liked the message in this short. K is for Knell - I don't fully understand this short, especially the ending, but it was the most effective at creating a real sense of dread and suspense. O is for Ochlocracy - like the Jesus short, this bit was also quite intelligent, and I found the plot to be really clever. It was similar to C for Capital Punishment because of the whole mob mentality piece, but the zombie spin was, in my eyes, really brilliant. S is for Split - my favorite part of this short was the split screen. Overall, it wasn't particularly spectacular but the split really added an interesting aspect to the break-in story. W is for Wish - maybe it's just my nostalgia kicking in, but this short was super adorable and I loved seeing a "fantasy" world turning out to be hell. Y is for Youth - this short was the saddest of them all, featuring a girl fantasizing about killing her abusive parents as it is revealed that she self harms. I thought this short had a very human aspect to it that I really appreciated. LEAST FAVSG is for Granddad - I just found this short overly strange without any real explanation for the behavior of the characters. L is for Legacy - oh vey, this short made absolutely no sense and featured some brutally awful CG effects. T is for Torture Porn - simply put, this was unimaginative and predictable. U is for Utopia - again, this was not particularly imaginative or interesting. I'm sick of seeing films about not perfect people in a utopian society. V is for Vacation - featuring unlikable and unrealistic characters, this just felt like a crappy found footage flick.

There is certainly no shortage of anthologies in the horror genre and, typically, the problem with the average entry is the lack of consistent qualities in the works. While some may be great, the bad ones leaving you walking away with the feeling that the overall product is mediocre and forgettable. Such was the case with the first installment in this series, though it may have been more memorable for its' questionable taste decisions, including a brutal cat murder, a miscarriage and child molestation, not to mention the overload of bad animation.They seem to have learned lessons on multiple fronts with this one, as there was little objectionable material that would turn off the average horror fan and the quality of the shorts seems to have improved quite a bit as well. As a frequenter of this site, I generally don't like "those reviews" that break down each segment, but you know what. The heck with it. I'm writing one of those now...CREAM OF THE CROP - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT was a well-constructed little story with some top notch grue - Jesus may be the best of the bunch with a story about revenge from the grave and the horrors that often accompany religious fanaticism - ROULETTE is a tight mini-thriller that is well-paced and riveting - SPLIT seemed to be going into cliché territory until the final reveal showed it to be something moreTHE GOOD - AMATEUR was an amusing story of a hit gone wrong - BADGER may not be for everyone, but I found it charming fun - INVINCIBLE steals some from the cake zombie segment in CREEPSHOW but feature good effects and a good story - MASTICATE is a well-shot short film with a funny little ending - NEXUS by Larry Fessenden is one of those stories where the strands meet in the end. It says something that the short works even though you see that finale coming beforehand - OCHLOCRACY is a zombie film done from the "other perspective"THE AVERAGE - DELOUSED is the first of the animated shorts and reminded me much of an old Tool video - FALLING is an arab/jew story with not much happening - KNELL is a Lovecraftian sci-fi short with an enigmatic finale - QUESTIONAIRE takes a predicable premise and ruins it more with bad effects - UTOPIA has strong images but its' too short to convey its' message successfully, one that's done to death in sci-fi anyways - VACATION would fit into the VHS series well - WISH started off with promise, using the idea of being sucked into an old 80s toy commercial and what the world really may have been like, but ultimately ends up feeling like a student project - XYLOPHONE ends well, but is far too predictable - YOUTH is a bizarre Asian short with no real hookTHE BAD - EQUILIBRIUM is a cheesy little short that attempts to be funny - GRANDDAD suffers from the same fate of trying to mix odd humor with bad horror - HEAD GAMES is a pointless Plympton cartoon - LEGACY may be out of my cultural experience to understand but feels like Gwar attacking an African village - PPP SCARY would have been bad for a high school talent show skit and deserves no spot here. Probably the worst of the bunch - TORTURE PORN is the Soska sisters being lazy to bash us in the had with a message - ZYGOTE is the type of stupid ass premise that gives indie horror a bad name

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.