ABCs of Death 2 was one of my most anticipated films of October, along with V/H/S: Viral and Annabelle. I couldn’t wait to see which select theaters would be playing ABCs 2 so I bit the $9.99 bullet and rented it On Demand. Let’s just say if V/H/S turns out to be good it will complete a nice little “trifecta”.

I liked the first ABCs enough to give it 4 stars and I did not know if a sequel could hold its own. Then I remembered ABCs 2 technically had 26 chances to win me over. Thankfully, I didn’t need to rely on only one positive entry. ABCs of Death 2 follows the same criteria as the original: 26 directors, 26 short films of horror (sometimes mixed with comedy), each representing a letter of the alphabet.

I’ll speed this up because it’s currently 5:53 am and I need to get away from this screen. My initial thoughts after finishing ABCs 2 were, “I think I liked the first one better, overall.” So, just to make sure, I proceeded to look up and reread the synopses of the first movie’s shorts. After refreshing my memory I tallied up how many “letters” I would give a thumbs up to and my total came to 11. That’s 11 out of the 26 films in the alphabet for ABCs of Death. Then I pulled up the new ABCs 2 list and counted the good ones out from the bad. To my surprise, the “liked” pile stacked up to 14. That’s about a %10 increase from film to film. Turns out ABCs of Death 2 would be my preferred lesson book of death.

Although I did find more stories appealing in the second film, the entire package would still be defined hit-or-miss as was the case with the first one. This new chapter of horror is a lot more tame and accessible than its predecessor and ultimately makes it a tad better in my eyes. ABCs 1 seemed to have more weird and less sense. This time around, I had slightly more fun learning my ABCs. My favorite skits from ABCs of Death 2 are J, K, M, R, T, V, and Y (in no particular order but alphabetical).

★★★★☆

4 S-T-A-R-S out of 5