All Hallows Eve 2 (2015)

The first All Hallows Eve movie may not have been for everyone, but it was notable for the unusual savagery and violence it had compared to other such cheesy and campy Halloween flicks of its type – it was actively uncomfortable to watch. Then I guess someone wasn't happy with that, so they made a sequel and said 'okay, change absolutely everything, take out your cool clown mascot character, and also make it fucking terrible.' Here's All Hallows Eve 2!

Director: Various

Starring: A ouija board and a glass of wine

IMDb

Co-written with Nathan.

Like the first one, this is an anthology of short horror films, each by a different director. But the first one had three fairly fleshed out stories with clear plots and development from beginning to end. This one has about four billion shorter stories and none of them are that good – in fact, the whole thing is like a wet fart, with no worthwhile moments and nothing of substance. They didn't even bring back their clown mascot, Art, from the first one. Instead, we get the jackass pumpkin-faced killer on the cover, who's never given a name or any kind of storyline. Just look at this piece of garbage:

Don't you just hate it already? It's like a watered down, dollar-store knock off version of a nationally well-known brand. It just sucks, reeking of pandering and not trying very hard. He is probably the kind of guy who bums rides off of his friends and then makes fun of them in a way that he thinks is much more charming than it really is, all while smoking in the car even though you asked him three times not to. Anyway, let's move on...

The wrap-around story is already a step down from the first one. This time, rather than the babysitter and the kids exchanging actual dialogue like real characters, we get a random mid-20s chick sitting at home alone drinking wine, playing with a Ouija board, asking it whether her boyfriend is going to come over or not. You know, I don't blame her boyfriend for not being there – this chick is kinda lame.

Yeah, fuck all the cool Halloween parties at bars, THIS is where the fun's REALLY at!

Then a mysterious haunted video tape is dropped off at her doorstep. So she starts watching it... wow, is that the entire set-up? How much lazier can you get?

The first story is about a babysitter carving a pumpkin with some dumb kid, in a world that recalls the 1978 Halloween with the Halloween imagery turned up to 1,000. You could overdose on the amount of orange colors and pumpkin imagery just in the first scene.

What season is it again?!

I guess they try to bake some pumpkin seeds for whatever reason, and the little kid accidentally starts choking on one. Here's where Nathan and I tried to play a game: who's dumber, the kid for choking on a fucking pumpkin seed, or the babysitter who's first idea for first aid is to take a knife to the kid's throat to try and get it out that way? I think I'm going with the babysitter. I mean, fuck calling 9-1-1, am I right? What can THOSE jackasses do?

What was her plan for when this kid's parents come home? "Sorry guys, I had to cut your kid's throat"? I have a feeling she wouldn't be called back.

Then I guess it turns out the pumpkin seeds start mutating into some kind of vague Alien-like chest-burster thing, which is the end of the story as both of them die from it. Wow. I am so amazed that this cliché deadpan sarcasm is all I can muster up. If this isn't the worst fear-mongering I've ever seen about GMOs, then I guess it's just a shitty horror story.

Second story is about a bunch of kids trick or treating in some weird post-apocalyptic hellscape. They come across a heavily guarded house that turns on its lights just to tell them to go away. Wow, sounds like you already had your mind made up, huh jackass? Inside, I guess, it's a dude and his wife, both kind of sick looking, pondering if it's even Halloween at all. Because the best Halloween movies are set in dreary dystopias where you don't know if it's Halloween. Ah the spirit of the holidays.

Yeah, I'm sick of the movie too. Maybe go get some Mucinex.

The kids find their ways inside, only to turn into a bunch of actual monsters for, uh, no reason that I can see. Seriously, there's no explanation. This shit is the equivalent of homework turned in with no explaining how you got the answer to that math problem. It's basically like an unfinished plot. I guess we do get some decent makeup for a few minutes?

I'm also calling bullshit on the devil in this one - I saw the first All Hallows Eve, and the devil in THAT movie's story about a cult that impregnates women in the sewer looked nothing like THIS guy. Clearly this is a sham and I want my money back. Is this the kind of shitty service I can expect from this establishment???

It's Satan's make-over day here at All Hallows Eve.

It ends with, I dunno, the wife sitting in the dark and then disappearing. What does it mean? Who knows - maybe her contract expired before they could finish shooting.

"My contract didn't cover speaking more than two lines, or even really getting up from kneeling. Too bad!"

It really doesn't get any better from here on out – there are a lot of half-baked stories with no good characters, story ideas or scares. It really just seems like there wasn't much thought put into these – I hate to dump on a bunch of indie filmmakers probably trying their best, but they're just kind of bad all around. I love how you barely ever even go back to the wrap-around story about the girl with the Ouija board. What was the point of even having it then?

I'll try to say something positive here... uh, it's less misogynist than the first movie? Maybe? However I don't get why that means they had to make this one so boring. Honestly, I was hoping for a shot of Art the murderous clown from last movie in therapy for his horrific crimes. It would be stupid, but at least it would tie together the two movies.

Like, one story is just a three-minute thing where some idiot teenagers go to a carnival and the first thing they see is a booth where you're allowed to throw deadly weapons at a person tied to a board defenseless. I always loved doing this the moment I walked into a fucking carnival too:

I guess doing this in public where anyone can see is no big deal... oh who am I kidding, trying to nitpick at something this vapid?

And it turns out one of the kids is the son of the guy tied up, and the guy apparently abused the kid. So then you just get a few quick shots of them throwing knives and spiked balls at the guy's crotch and stuff. Wow. I have no idea what we're supposed to gain from this except that child abuse is BAD and only SPAWNS MORE VIOLENCE LATER... oh, wait, it doesn't even really mean to say the second part. Never mind. Forgive me for accusing this movie of ever having a point.

Another one is absurdly long and focuses on a little kid afraid of a monster under the bed. There are absolutely no surprises here – it goes exactly as you expect. The kid is afraid of a monster, his mom tells him it's not real, there is some tragic backstory about his dad dying in the war so he is obsessed with his dad's old dog tags. All that's missing is Christopher Walken with a solid speech about how there was a watch up his ass for years.

Man I wish there was a watch-up-ass story in this. It would be one thing that actually came out from up its own ass in this story.

Honestly, I was so bored with this, I just used it as naptime before the next story. It's by far the longest one for no reason at all. How does it end; the mother getting sucked under the bed and the kid screaming like every single story like this? ZZZzzzzzz...

Of special ridiculousness is the final story, which is an absurd Spanish horror story about this guy who finds a ghost on his computer. Weird, usually that's just called porn ads. Are you sure you had your ad blocker running, dude?

Ah yes, the greatest social media site, Unnamed Facebook Knockoff Because Copyright. I love it so.

It's just another boring-ass story – nothing at all of interest happens, and the ghost kills this dude and his girlfriend at the end and that's it. It's straightforward to the point of being completely uneventful. But why is it in Spanish with no subtitles? The movie itself is all in English otherwise. It just feels like someone put this whole anthology together at the last minute after a cocaine binge once he realized it was almost time to turn it in.

Then in the wrap-around story, we get a very quick, watered down version of the ending of the first one - the girl tries to turn off the evil videotape, only it doesn't work. Instead, the pumpkin-faced killer appears and then comes into real life and kills her! Wow! All those other dumb movies that had EXPLANATIONS and STORYLINES for their killers sure are suckers! Who knew all you needed was a quick two-second shot of your killer murdering someone at the very end of an anthology that had nothing to do with him? It's SO FUCKING EASY.

That's All Hallows Eve 2. It's so boring and dumb that I don't even want to finish this review properly. It would be more effort to do that than anyone put into this movie... so, bye!

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

All Hallows Eve (2013)

All Hallows Eve is a 2013 horror movie that I had never heard of until I bought it at the Spooky Empire convention last year. I then watched it when I got home and it was one of the scariest fucking things I’ve ever seen. Here’s a review of it.

Director: Damian Leone

Starring: Katie McGuire, Mike Giannelli

IMDb

Co-written with Nathan.

This is a sick fucking movie, and I mean that in a literal sense… the thing is that it really doesn’t do anything terribly different from the generic horror movies you’ve seen a hundred times, but just does things in a more depraved manner. It’s an anthology story with a wrap-around about a babysitter watching two kids on Halloween night – you could easily get the impression it’s just a straight rip-off.

But then they find a weird unmarked video tape – not a DVD, a video tape, because I guess the sick perverts of this town are not up to date with things. Or maybe just every time you need a haunted media in a horror movie, it’s something old. A haunted iPod or DVD doesn’t have the same resonance. And a haunted mp3 file? Fucking forget it.

The tape has a bunch of shorter movies on it, which the babysitter, after some hemming and hawing that ultimately goes nowhere, agrees to let them watch. You’ll start to see how amazing that really is when you see the fucked up shit on these stories – though the kids keep claiming they’ve seen “much worse stuff” on the internet. I guess they’re busy scouring the Dark Web for snuff videos or something.

The first story is about a girl who is sitting alone in a train station when a clown approaches her, initially seeming annoying but harmless, like any weird asshole you see on a train. But then things get weird when he pulls out a syringe and sticks her with it, kidnapping her – right there, it’s already fucked up.

Is he medically licensed to do this?

She wakes up in a dungeon with two other women, all of them chained up by their necks. They wander around a bit, often hysterical – it’s weird how the main girl is suddenly brave and badass. Earlier, she was scared of a cockroach she saw.

Then they find what I can only describe as what conservatives think Planned Parenthood is:

"THIS is what's happening to YOUR WIVES AND DAUGHTERS when they even GO NEAR a Planned Parenthood!!!"

I guess it ends with the devil raping the main girl – surprise, happy ending! I’m glad that babysitter let these kids watch this…

To be fair, she does finally make them stop watching it. The little boy she’s babysitting throws a tantrum over it but eventually relents. Then she goes back and watches it by herself with a glass of wine – choosing this over Night of the Living Dead by the way. Yeah, I’d also choose a creepy random video someone slipped in a child’s Halloween bag that could be a real-life snuff torture movie over a horror classic. I understand her.

The next story is about a woman alone in a house at night, talking on the phone with her friend about her boyfriend, who randomly woke up in the middle of the night and painted a horrific nightmare painting that he doesn’t actually remember. I love how they just talk about this like it’s normal, never really spending much time on it. You know how those artists are! They’re fucking idiots, right? Just painting stuff they don’t remember…

Anyway, that’s not even really what this story is about – it’s actually about an alien that looks like a child’s drawing come to life stalking her in the dark. As silly as this thing looks, I have to admit, I actually find it pretty creepy to look at. It’s just…eerie.

Just something about that big face and those dead, expressionless eyes.

The boyfriend eventually gets on the phone and tells her to call the cops – but she’s a black woman, so justifiably, she’s afraid the cops will shoot her in her own house, and doesn’t call them.

Instead, the alien ends up dragging her away, probably just to throw her a party, I dunno, I'm naive and have never seen a horror movie. I’d say this probably goes on too long for its own good, but even then I still like it – there’s something dark and hopeless about this story that I don’t get from other, similar ones.

Finally we get the last story, and this is the one I was actively kind of avoiding watching again – it's the most gruesome and gross one by far. I haven't really had a reaction like that to a horror movie in, well, maybe ever, just to illustrate that.

It’s basically a pretty straightforward old horror tale of a young woman alone at night running into the killer clown from earlier. She stops at a gas station where she finds out from the one dude working there that a clown has shit and pissed all over the walls of his bathroom – you know, the old clown trick book in play. He gets run off, and the guy is trying to help the woman find her way back to the highway when he gets distracted by some loud noises. And really, aren't you guys tired of non-vegetarian clowns? I am. I sure fucking am.

End the mutilating of gas station attendants! Eat at your local vegan coffee shop!

From here it just gets more and more depraved – there’s a fairly routine chase scene made creepier by the rawness of it. I guess the gritty looking, grainy camera style adds to it. And it’s just super uncomfortable and bleak at every turn, moreso than your garden variety Friday the 13th ripoff or whatever. She gets into a car with a stranger passing by, which, if you don’t know, is always, 100% of the time a bad idea in a horror movie. And like clockwork, the clown drives up to them and pulls out a random gun and kills him:

The clown is a licensed member of the NRA. He believes in the second amendment.

I don’t even know what it is with this scene. It’s so bizarre it’s almost comical that this fucking clown is using a gun – but nah, it doesn’t quite hit comical and stays weirdly menacing instead.

Then the car crashes in a horribly violent manner, but that isn’t even the worst part – the worst is what happens next, which is really so awful that I'd call it up there with the worst things I've seen on film, how this story ends for her. It's fictional, yeah, and they don't dwell on it much, but the visual is disconcerting to say the least - and to say what it really is, it's fucking horrific shit.

Back in the real world – or the wrap-around story – the babysitter tries to turn off the video, but it won't turn off, instead showing a mirror image of the babysitter standing in the living room, but with the clown behind her in the reflection. This, if you remember, was why they had to discontinue VHS tapes. It just wasn't working out with all the demonic clowns appearing in people's rooms.

Then, I shit you not, the clown appears in real life and kills the two kids she was babysitting. Wow! I wonder what she's gonna tell their parents! This clown has really put her in a pickle!

I am limiting the things I censor on this blog to one per post... sorry.

And that's the movie. Dead kids! Happy Halloween!

I don't even know what to say here. It's a sick, demented fucking movie and one of the scariest I've ever seen. It's just the way everything is done in this – it all feels super helpless and deranged, and the tone is as if it was made by a real life psychopath who was filming things he'd really done. It can be silly, sure, but I think the silliness just accentuates how depraved it truly is, as everything has that diabolical, dark air to it even when you're giggling. Every second of this is uncomfortable as fuck and deeply disturbing.

I don't even really know if I like the movie. It's that fucked up. But it did work as a horror film - they're supposed to effect the viewer, which this one did. So I can at least say that much. It is an unavoidable thing once you've seen this film - it will stay with you.

So with that said, I recommend it if you want something to watch this Halloween.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

Most Christmas movies try to replicate some feeling of the holidays in some way. Well, this movie is like the stale feeling of the day after Christmas when you have to stand in line at the mall to return some shitty toy your kid decided he didn't want, and then going home to eat leftover Christmas dinner that just isn't as good.

Director: Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, Brett Sullivan

Starring: William Shatner, George Buza

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is an anthology series, Trick 'R Treat style with the stories all intercut within each other so the movie is constantly going back and forth between all of them, but that's really about the only similarity with Trick 'R' Treat. That movie was actually fun and had a good sense of wit, and this one... well, neither of those things describes this movie. The best I can say about it is 'you could do worse.'

We start this off with Game Of Thrones Santa here hearing some weird noises from behind a door... and then it just kind of cuts away without properly starting a story. Uh, I think you guys were sleeping through the part of class where they taught how to start a fucking movie.

Then we get a bunch of other stories, like this one about a radio host played by William Shatner of all people, who just yammers on and on to no one, babbling about things that make no sense, until this one other guy in the studio with him just has enough:

Strangely this is what happens every time William Shatner tries to tell anyone anything - they respond with 'Fuck Christmas.' It's an oddly specific trigger for some reason.

Then there's the family going to visit their grandma who lives in, apparently, a mansion from a CLUE game or something. The father, who is apparently cast as a discount Chevy Chase from National Lampoon, is only really going to shake his aunt down for some of that sweet, sweet inheritance money! Merry Christmas!

"The only thing more powerful than the Christmas spirit is my relentless, disgusting greed."

Fortunately (for me; unfortunately for him) his idiotic son breaks a Krampus figurine on the grandma's shelf, which prompts her to throw them all out immediately. Oh how I can just feel the Yuletide spirit flowing through this movie's veins. I like how the rest of their story involves them being hunted by the Krampus... what, just because they broke that stupid figurine? Really? Who knew the Krampus was such a whiny baby.

Then the Krampus went and told on the idiotic son to the teacher, who put the boy in time out for this heinous offense.

I guess it's revealed later on that they've all done some horrible things to warrant the Krampus coming after them, like the daughter has stolen a few things and the little boy has killed a bunch of animals in the neighborhood. Wait, hold on, woah – that's a fucking insane thing to just drop out of nowhere. How is this just a footnote in this movie? Shouldn't the whole story be about the little serial killer in the making? This kindergartener version of fucking Dexter? I really think that would've been more entertaining of a story.

In the end, only the mother survives, and she goes back to the grandma's house, where she learns that the Krampus is actually sort of a weird werewolf-type creature in this story, who someone with a lot of rage and anger can just turn into at the holiday times. This is such a dumb story that I am amazed anyone wrote this crap with a straight face. It's not even played like a comedy – it's totally fucking serious. There are a lot of people angry at the holidays. Do all of them turn into the retarded cousin of the Abominable Snowman on Christmas?

Anyway, the wife then turns into the Krampus herself, seemingly understanding exactly how it works despite it being a totally alien concept. She kills the grandma, because violence against old people is always cool.

In another story, a family is out getting a Christmas tree at, I guess, a location they're not supposed to be in. The little kid gets sucked into the tree from Stranger Things and when his family finds him, he's acting strange and different.

"Hey, our kid came out of a tree-hole, better not ask him if he's okay and instead just go back to normal life! Whoop-de-do!"

Like, later on he just will not quit eating spaghetti – I know, the horror, right? He's so in love with spaghetti that he stabs his own father with a fork for trying to take it away from him! Ouch! That's gotta hurt!

He also does other weird things like stand in the bathroom and watch his mom take a shower. I'm just blown away at the creativity and imagination of this movie's evil kid actions – eating too much spaghetti and watching his mom shower. The most evil and diabolical shit ever, truly.

If by now you're thinking that this kid must warrant some type of disciplinary action, well, the father has all your domestic violence needs covered as he starts shouting at the kid and asking what's wrong with him. The kid responds by upping the ante on violence and killing his father, like it's some kind of fucking contest. Jeez, kid! Bit of an overreaction!

Just, tone it down a little, ya know.

Continuing in the mold of child abuse, the mother, recognizing that there's some kind of demon inside her son, beats him up with a baseball bat until he's unconscious. You know, I'm starting to doubt that there's any demon in this story. This family is just fucking violent and fucked up.

But there IS a demon, I guess, so the mom has to take him back out into the woods at the behest of this weird fat guy who says he's the guardian of the dwarves or some bullshit.

… you know, when I write that out, it sounds pretty fucking stupid.

What follows is an extremely half-assed “climax” to this story where she accidentally shoots the fat guy somehow (whoopsy-daisy! This accidental murder is never mentioned again!), so I guess there's a moment of thinking there's no way to get the kid back. The thing she THOUGHT was her son turns into a weird dwarf creature that looks like your 85-year-old neighbor run over with a truck and then put too long in the dryer.

Looks like Gollum with leukemia.

Fortunately, despite its hostility before, now it just wants to help: she looks into its eyes and asks for its help, and it just goes into the Stranger Things hole in the tree and gets her kid back for her, no further trouble at all. Wow is that underwhelming. What's next, a story about this thing helping an old woman across the street? Is this the PBS Kids Horror Hour now?

The other story is about three idiots breaking into this abandoned mental asylum or school or something like that to film a documentary. This one is pretty boring and mostly consists of them just wandering around like morons, even settling in to sleep there once they find themselves locked in, I guess. That's good for the one girl, though, as she coaxes this nerdy guy to come with her and have sex.

Then it's discovered that there's some convoluted plot about a ghost girl or something who tried to have a child but died in childbirth I guess. So now the ghost just tries again and again to have a baby through a human girl by possessing them to have sex. I guess it works this time, too, as she gets pregnant and kills the guy, presumably then going off to have her baby and live in the dank, abandoned mental asylum or something. This is the worst porno setup ever; zero out of five stars.

What did this have to do with Christmas, anyway? Because there's a crucifixion pose in it? That is a pretty thin point of connection.

Meanwhile in the wraparound story about Santa, he ends up fighting all of his elves as they turn into bloodthirsty zombies. It's not too bad of a sequence, with some fun violence and carnage. But it's pretty hard to find it badass when he keeps shouting out the elves' names as he's killing them – hearing anybody shout 'Not you, too, Sparkles!' before chopping off an elf's head is pretty confused and jumbled. It's mostly just silly.

Then he fights the Krampus in the manner of a stale ripoff of a bad superhero flick, with him saying a bunch of stuff like 'Krampus, my mortal enemy.' It's all pretty lame. Like if the kid from Jingle All The Way wrote a horror story.

Then it's actually revealed that none of the Santa shit was real, and he was actually just some nutjob that went on a rampage in a local mall, butchering and killing a bunch of innocent people. Wow, that's horrifically unpleasant – maybe it'd be a good twist if this was a whole movie's worth of a story, but as is, it's just tonally confused and kind of ugly and depressing. Merry Christmas!

This is a pretty weak anthology. I guess you could do way worse – nothing here is outright awful or anything. But the stories are not really that well written, with have extremely weak endings and a lack of any kind of point. I said the final story was tonally confused, and really, the whole thing is; the movie doesn't seem to have anything it particularly wants you to take away after you finish it.

In addition, the way the stories are all jumbled up just doesn't work, and further removes any kind of tension or scares this might have had because they're not really cut up in an engaging manner. It feels like this was all just thrown together at the last minute, like a really shitty, lazy last minute Christmas present.

And who likes those? It's usually better for everyone if said gift is just never given at all.

Images copyright of those who own them, we do not own anything here.

The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

If you want to learn the alphabet, there are lots of ways you can do it. Feeling left out, the horror movie genre decided to get in on the game, too. Then, a few years later, it tried again.

Directors: Various

Starring: Various

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

Coming off like a children's book written by Ted Bundy, this is yet another anthology of horror stories with 26 different directors trying their hands at making some weird, crazy, creative stuff. Some of it's good, some of it's bad...and some of it just makes me wish I had stayed home today. Let's dive right in and see what this batshit insane lesson has to teach us about the alphabet.

A is for Amateur

The worst hitman in the world, who I'm guessing was hired from the security department of a Toys R Us, botches up his kill and ends up re-enacting Die Hard in the air vents.

B is for Badger

The story of an incredibly obnoxious TV personality who bullies his staff until they presumably want to see blood – either their own or his. Fortunately, a giant demonic badger is there to help them with the second one:

His last word, after he is torn in half, is “Cut!” Which is a line so stupid that it circles the globe, goes into orbit and finds all the knowledge in the universe, then plummets back down to Earth, cures all the world's ills, and then bends time backwards with its newfound superpowers and it goes straight back to being ass-backwards stupid again.

...that's how dumb that line was.

Anyway, I'm just astounded that a giant demonic man-eating badger isn't the focus of this, but a jackass TV personality dying is the focus of this. Priorities schmiorities.

C is for Capital Punishment

In a truly award-winning society, the town conspires to beat the shit out of some random guy who they think kidnapped some girl. It doesn't really give a reason why they think so, so I'll just assume they picked his name out of a hat. Anyway, they take him out in the woods and try to kill him, very unsucessfully, with a rubber ax they apparently bought from Toys R Us where the guy from the “A” segment worked.

"DAMMIT JENKINS, DID YOU BUY A GODDAMNED FAKE AX AGAIN?! *sigh* I thought we learned our lesson the last five times we did this."

But they eventually get it right. At least they can kill a guy five-against-one when his hands are bound! They at least have that. Oh, and it turns out the girl is okay and they killed him for nothing. Have fun with years of soul searching and self loathing, guys!

D is for Deloused

"So this is the end of life...eaten by a giant lice..."

This one is about lice, apparently, as some truly strange things happen with a guy and a bug. I dunno. The mood and atmosphere are creepy, but I can't help but think this is what's going on in Sid from Toy Story's head all the time – either lice, or the batshit insane contents of this short film, you decide.

E is for Equilibrium

Two stoner rejects from a 90s movie have become trapped on a desert island and nobody noticed or cared. A beautiful woman shows up, inexplicably surviving despite the harsh waves and lack of any other land around the island. They fight over her but then decide to kill her because she's breaking up their non-gay 90s-movie-style bromance.

F is for Falling

A really interesting segment about an Israeli woman paratrooper fleeing from Arab law and getting caught in a tree. Some kid finds her and they strike up some quite well written dialogue that is sweet and kind of sad. It's a sort of romance, although I don't think many romances involve the main girl breaking her leg and hobbling around with the bone sticking out. Or, for that matter, the boy shooting himself by dropping his gun.

Buuuuuuut it was still good. Love just knows no boundaries.

G is for Grandad

I just...you know what, no. I'm not talking about this one.

H is for Head Games

No matter who you are or what you like in a partner, no matter what your tastes are in terms of romance, I think there's one thing we can agree on – we all need a guy or gal we can do this with:

Ah, true love.

I is for Inheritance

This one is about as charming as a five-month old child who hasn't been fed in a week, and with even more screaming and less capacity for sympathy. With all the graphics of your least favorite Nickelodeon shows as a kid, the “I” segment is about some kind of immortal grandma who won't die and her screeching hell-spawn relatives who try and kill her to get money or whatever - what a bunch of fucks.

It turns out there's some kind of strange amulet in the grandma's mouth that makes her live forever. She seems to want to die, and all the miserable hellspawn trying to kill her presumably also want that to happen. But instead of just taking the amulet out and getting rid of it, I guess setting her on fire is more appealing.

J is for Jesus

Two gay guys get tortured and killed in some shithole by some piece of shit bigot fuck. Fortunately for them, one of them was hiding the ability to turn into a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave that comes back and eviscerates their tormentors.

K is for Knell

A young woman looks out the window and sees a bunch of people killing each other in hotel windows. Then, the same thing happens to her as a black slime mixes with blood on the floor. It's effective, creepy and way too vague to figure out what the fuck it actually meant.

No, my vacation is turning into an unfinished Windows screensaver! Control Alt Delete! CONTROL ALT DELETE!!

L is for Legacy

A spirit comes alive in Africa and brutally murders several members of a nearby village. Too bad they didn't have the special healthcare plan that offers protection from ancient primordial spirits!

M is for Mastication

When my friends and I were watching this one, about a crazy guy in piss-stained underwear who goes on a cannibalistic rampage on a busy street, I made a joke about bath salts. Which turned out to be exactly the same punchline as the movie itself came up with. I'm not saying I'm the secret writer of this segment, but I am saying the writer of this segment and myself have never been seen in a room together.

Zach Galifinakis, no!

N is for Nexus

A trippy short in which a girl is bitchy to a cab driver while trying to meet her stupid boyfriend on Halloween. This causes a chain reaction of events which ends in a child dying. Moral of the story, be nice to your cab driver, or else little children will die at his hands. Fear the cab drivers. Keep one eye open when you sleep.

O is for Ochlocracy

Another of the really good ones in this, a Japanese film telling the story of a postapocalyptic future where a woman is being put on trial for killing her kid in a zombie apocalypse. It's actually really effective, with some good acting and the oppressive atmosphere working really well.

At the end there's a twist and we find out everyone persecuting the woman is a zombie, as zombies have now become sentient. It's kind of played for shock value a bit, and there's some of the old Japanese vaudeville-esque humor, but mostly it's a very dark story.

Except for the cartoony judge that yells “DEATH!!!!” like it's the biggest thing in the world for him. I love this guy. He should be the judge for every case in real life. Give him a pay raise.

The legal system at its finest.

P is for P-P-P-Scary!

A tribute to old black and white Three-Stooges esque movies. It's funny and has a guy who can shrink his own head as well as make his head appear on a baby!

So like every movie in that genre, I like it.

Q is for Questionnaire

A story about a guy who answered a bunch of questions to get money, only to have his brain put inside of a gorilla instead. Worst April Fool's ever. I dunno though, maybe it was an improvement. We don't really know anything about the guy. Maybe he was actually a big slacker, and the gorilla version of him will fight crime or something.

R is for Roulette

A bunch of people play Russian roulette as zombies wait outside. Or, Walking Dead season 11. Either one.

S is for Split

Another of my favorites here – this one is about a guy who hears a home break-in while talking to his wife on the phone from another country. She gets killed, and it turns out to be another woman – and the wife of the other guy the husband was staying with at a hotel! What a twist!

"Since you'll be going away for murder for the rest of your life now, honey, I guess I'll just stay with this guy and be gay."

T is for Torture Porn

Girl gets man-handled at an audition for a porn tape, and then turns into a demon and rapes and kills everyone in the room for being misogynistic shitheads. Not that what the porn tape guys were doing was good, as they were just being real dicks the entire time, but...what was the story here? Did she just go into that porn tape audition thinking gee, I bet they'll treat me like a respectable person and not ask me to even take off my clothes? I know she's a demon, but it's confusing as shit. Unless she was just a vengeful spirit who planned to kill them in the first place.

Well, actually, that sounds good to me. Let's let that be it.

U is for Utopia

An ugly guy who somehow wandered into the exalted halls of beautiful people finds out that that isn't allowed after he gets incinerated immediately by the robot police that roam the halls of this place. Gee, if your only standard for a Utopian society is “no ugly people,” my guess is you're also the type of person who thinks Budweiser's Superbowl ad this year was accurate.

V is for Vacation

A girl chats on video on the phone with her boyfriend, who for some reason is at a resort without her, but with a male friend of his – huh, yeah, not weird at all...

Anyway, she finds out they've been sleeping with a bunch of whores and doing drugs. The one guy whose girlfriend it is frantically protests that it wasn't him! It was the other guy who was doing all of it alone! The whores, the drugs, everything! What, was the main guy just curled fetal-pose in a corner sucking his thumb the whole time?

Oh well – they get killed by a naked prostitute, which is always the greatest way to end a vacation.

W is for Wish

Two kids get their wish of being teleported inside their favorite TV show, Fantasy Man. Which is a pretty shitty wish when you think about it. You dumb ass kids couldn't think of anything better? I guess they deserve what happens next – being trapped in the castle of the show's villain. The one kid gets killed, and the other gets kidnapped by Fantasy Man, who seems to mistake him for a princess and carries him away trapped in a bag.

He's riding off into the court of lawsuits for child predators. That light in the distance will go out pretty quick.

X is for Xylophone

Little girl plays with a xylophone, babysitter goes nuts and disembowels her and then plays with her bones.

Okay, come on – I know these are just goofy, overexaggerated cartoon-horror type stories, but we have to start asking questions here. Where did they get this babysitter? Is it really the best idea to shop for babysitters for your kids at the nearby mental asylum? I doubt they even waited until she got out – the mother probably just gave the director of the asylum a handjob in a broom closet and he went, okay, take your pick of the litter!

The lesson I take away from this is, never cut corners when hiring a babysitter.

Y is for Youth

A Japanese girl takes out her woes about her family by engaging in some admittedly pretty creative fantasies. I mean, even as shitty as her family must be, they'd at least appreciate the creativity in these fantasies.

Z is for Zygote

A woman fends off birth with medicine that makes her keep a child inside her belly for 13 years. If that didn't sound like something that would end up on the cover of a tabloid rag or the Daily Mail or some shit, it's actually an extremely hamfisted metaphor for a miscarriage.

Yeah, I don't know about this one. For what it was trying to do, it's pretty well done – it's well-directed, creepy in how depressing and dark it is, very disturbing and certainly doesn't pull any punches. I'm sure whoever made this has some reason they wanted to do it – it's not like this is a topic you just skate around lightly.

But it's just so heavy-handed and in your face, and there's just no context to this. Is there a reason I need to see this? It seems like something this intentionally dark, gruesome and serious was made for a reason, but like a really pushy political protester while you're just trying to go to the post office send a package to your sister in the mail, it's just needlessly heavy when we have zero context for it. Maybe some people will find this one powerful – I just found it a huge downer.

Plus, as my friend put it, "it was just really disgusting."

Can't argue with that one either.

Conclusions

So this is the end of our lesson today. What have we learned? Hmm, well, a lot. The ABCs of Death 2 was certainly a mixed bag like the first one, but I liked this one a bit more if I had to choose – more of these were good as opposed to those that weren't. The first couple are pretty shitty, but once we hit F it's actually quite strong – that one, along with H, L, M, O, P, Q, S, V and W were all varying degrees of good.

The only ones that were real downers this time were G, I and X. T wasn't great either, and Z had its own problems as I mentioned above.

And even the bad ones are still better in a minuscule way as opposed to stuff like The Thing remake or some other corporate bullshit with zero effort. So there is that. If you want something weird and crazy, this is a pretty good bed. Personally I hope we see more of the directors in this anthology – maybe full movies for some of them. That's the great thing about horror; the underground is usually the place to go to find good shit.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.