THE ABCs OF DEATH 2

The ABCs Of Death 2 Movie Review

Much like the first The ABCs of Death, this installment is a 26 story anthology, each representing a letter in the alphabet. The gimmick is this: 26 different directors from around the world are assigned a letter, and they must create a short that represent death at the hands of something to do with their assigned word. Also, like the original, this one is very hit or miss (the scale tips toward the latter). There is some really good stuff here: S Is For Split, to me, is topped only by D Is For Dogfight from the first film as being the best story from the first two films of this series. Q Is For Questionnaire is a close second in this sequel. N Is For Nexus is another strong segment, F Is For Falling and R Is For Roulette are also pretty good, and W Is For Wish is a really creative look at the world of action figures. Unfortunately, there are some segments that are just...bad. Z Is For Zygote leans on the disgusting (though it doesn't come close to the gross level of some of the stories from the first ABC's). G Is For Grandad and V Is For Vacation are also lame ducks here. My biggest problem with this movie is M Is For Masticate--this segment touches way too close to a real life occurrence and does so in a way that is so distasteful it is offensive (a word a seldom ever use) and illustrates how much disconnect there is between common decency and respect and American society in general. If you don't want to read a spoiler, skip ahead to the next paragraph, though I encourage you to just skip this segment completely if you watch this film (aside from the fact it is disgusting, it is also very poorly shot, written, and delivered)---this segment exists to make light of the 2012 incident that saw an idiot allegedly high on bath salts attack a homeless man, chewing his face off, before the police arrived to kill the attacker. In this segment, we see a man run through a crown of people in slow motion, tackle a man, take a bite out of him, and get gunned down by the police. We then get a joke about the guy being on bath salts. To mock this real life incident in a film is deplorable.

Most of the rest of the segments in this outing muddle about in a state of mediocrity. Some, oddly, even deliver a political message, and others, naturally, deliver the bizarre. Many rely way too heavily on very cheap CGI that does little more than remove the mood set by otherwise decent stories. Overall, if you have seen the first ABCs Of Death, you pretty much know what to expect here. You won't be overly impressed with much here (S and Q notwithstanding), but, with the exception of M, there isn't anything horrible either.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

The ABCs Of Death 2 Movie Trailer