Fantastic Fest ’14 Review: ABCs OF DEATH 2

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Kicking things off with a blast is a must. This is my first time at Fantastic Fest, its sensory overload for sure is messing with me on the first day here, so it’s a fitting thing to start with a crazy 26-short film compilation, right? Yes, the ABC’s of Death have returned after two years in order to teach us all a little bit more about mortality and beyond. Thankfully this isn’t a documentary, so the results are a bit more entertaining. My review of the first film made much note of how hit or miss anthology films can be, especially with so many sequences. Unsurprisingly, ABC’s of Death 2 is just as scattered, but not without merits.

Rather than delve into each and ruin some surprises, I’m going to refrain from trying to give much away in terms of content. Part of the fun is watching and attempting to guess what the director is going for with their letter and how exactly they’ll tie it all together. Often the cause of death itself isn’t the letter, which in some ways feels like a cop out and in others is actually welcome rather than just using a noun to do the job.

A by E.L. Katz is absolutely fantastic and is a perfect example of using so many A words that you can’t possibly guess which is the word of choice. On the stranger side is Robert Morgan’s D, a crudely executed yet beautiful animated short that’s so sublimely bizarre. Then there’s Bill Plympton’s totally batshit H! Plympton’s style of drawing has changed so much over the years yet is instantly identifiable in terms of animation, and he’s just as demented and funny as ever. The contest winner for M, this time live action, has been long viewable online but was still really enjoyable to see on the big screen. My favorites were courtesy of Steven Kostanski of Astron-6, which takes an action figure commercial and runs wild as hell, and Juan Martez’s (seriously) fucked up S that deals with a couple on a phone call. Both are examples of why the shorts play better as strange mysteries, having no clue what it’s representing until the title pops at the end. Less successful were a handful, but most notable was the Saska sisters’ T, which was the only one I believe I straight up hated.

Overall I definitely liked about 8 of the shorts and was entertained by another few and definitely more than the first ABCs, which is cool. It’s subjective as hell, but liking it more as a whole is impressive to me as I thought the (known) talent level of the first film was much stronger. You get the feeling that while the first film was an experiment, the second film had the luxury of data to reflect upon. There’s little doubt that they’ll do at least another one of these in another two years, and I welcome it with open arms. I can never learn TOO much, after all.