E is for ew.
“Ew. That’s gross.” “Ew. That’s funny.” “Ew. That’s kinda dumb.” “Ew. That’s inappropriate, but I see what they were going for.”
All of these reactions and more await in the latest horror omnibus film The ABCs of Death 2. Like the first in the series, it consists of 26 grisly short films, one for every letter of the alphabet, each from a different director. It’s this bold premise that is both the series’ blessing and its curse. Each film is too short to be really satisfying, but the iTunes shuffle-style format ensures you’re rarely bored. You don’t like the entry for the letter G? Don’t worry, H will be here any minute.
The structure works just as well as it did in previous movie. Each of the 26 episodes features a vision of mortality, usually a gruesome one, and usually darkly comic. When it’s curtains for the character, we read the short’s title (“A is for ___”). Thirty seconds into each film you start to get the gist. For the remaining three-and-a-half minutes your wheels will be spinning trying to figure out the title. I like to consider myself a sharp enough guy. I can do crossword puzzles. Yet I maintained about a 15% success rate at figuring these out. Turns out the dangerous race through Manhattan streets isn’t “N is for New York”, but “N is for Nexus.”
Even with the shock absorption that comes with this fleet-of-foot style, there are some problems. When you cram 26 different directors’ styles next to one another, it’s impossible to attain harmony. Some entries (like the opener from Cheap Thrills director EL Katz) are slick, stylish and silly. But the letter C from Julian Gilbey, director of A Lonely Place to Die, features a grisly beheading and, perhaps due to current events was difficult to “enjoy”. (The eventual reveal at the close of this one piece tries to pass it as dark satire, but it still didn’t sit right with me.)
Then there are times when a break in flow are just what the mortician ordered. Letters D and H are animated, the first with stop-motion photography by Robert Morgan, the second boasting hallucinatory line drawings from the legendary Bill Plympton. W comes from Steve Kostanski of the Canadian film collective Astron-6, and shows what life would be like if we were transported to a television commercial for action figures. It’s probably the best of the entire picture, alongside others that go for a richer “what if?” scenario instead of a simple gross-out. My other top pics are Hiajime Ohata’s O, which envisions truth an reconciliation tribunals of a post-zombie society and Chris Nash’s Z, featuring a pregnant woman who takes 13 years to come to term.
There are valleys between these peaks, but the momentum keeps you going. While the individual filmmakers may hate me for saying so, this is ideal viewing for the video on demand format. That lazier level of commitment will ensure that viewers don’t get too riled up over entries (like G, J, L, P and T) that are flat-out dumb. The sum total is worth more than its parts, and that works for the wider franchise in general. I have the same middling feeling about The ABCs of Death 2 that I had about The ABCs of Death, yet I can’t deny I’m totally on board for an ABCs of Death 3. In the face of endless demise, there’s still optimism.
