THE ABCs OF DEATH 2 (2014)
My opinion on the first ABCs Of Death was simple and to the point… “Intriguing premise has 26 filmmakers from around the globe each given a letter of the alphabet. They then must choose a word and make a film focusing on a death from that word. Too bad that out of 26 short films, only about 5 are actually worth watching.”…I am happy to say the sequel continues the intriguing premise, but also delivers far more quality vignettes to spook or gross out the intended horror audience. Sure there are a few clunkers and head-scratchers, but there are also far more effective and worth watching entries than the first installment. Directors include indie fixture Larry Fessenden (Beneath) and The Soska Sisters (American Mary, See No Evil 2).
An improvement and definitely worth a look with a variety of styles and stories…and some of the stories are quite gruesome!
BLOOD GLACIER (2013)
Austrian horror is a refreshing return to an old fashioned monster movie with charming prosthetics to represent it’s creatures instead of CGI. The film centers on a small weather observation station in the Swiss Alps that happens upon a bizarre single celled organism that turns the snow of the melting glacier it resides in, blood red. It also has a nasty habit of absorbing the genetic material of whatever ingests it and before you can say John Carpenter’s The Thing…there are a host of insect/animal hybrids running around. Now our crew and some visiting dignitaries must fend for their very lives against a variety of vicious genetic mutants.
Directed by Marvin Kren and written by Benjamin Hessler, this is nothing we haven’t seen before, but it is done well and is a fun and entertaining monster flick. The creatures are creatively designed and fairly well rendered and there is plenty of bloodletting to go along with their carnage. No classic, but an entertaining creature feature.
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