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All Hallows Eve 2

“All Hallows Eve 2” is an exceptional horror anthology that succeeds on all levels, delivering a solid sequel that manages to surpass the original.

It’s October and you know what that means?  Halloween is upon us! We’re celebrating the season with a month of Halloween-themed recommendations now streaming on Tubi. This week, we highlight the excellent 2015 horror anthology All Hallows Eve 2.

The first entry of this films series, covered in a previous Tubi Tuesday, follows a similar structure as this one: an unsuspecting babysitter watching a mysterious tape with horror shorts.  The original had much longer narrative shorts all revolving around a central character, Art the Clown, and all of the shorts were part of a larger narrative. However, the sequel does things a bit different.

The shorts are much shorter, there are more of them, and they are a whole lot better. It’s fairly rare that a sequel is better than the original, but I believe that to be the case with All Hallows Eve 2.

This film contains eight individual shorts, so let’s run through some of my favorites.

The first one I want to talk about is the third short in the movie known as “The Offering”. It follows a father and son driving on a snowy night out to the middle of nowhere. During the car ride, they argue. “Did you bring it?” What is it? Did you bring it?  Why do you need to bring something?

The best short horror stories are those who can do the heavy lifting of telling a story without all the exposition. “The Offering” does this perfectly. You don’t have to know what ‘IT’ is, just that it’s important, life or death type of stuff. They arrive at a lonely grave, and the son jumps out of the truck.

“I’m sorry!  My father didn’t know. We brought the meat though,” he yells into the terrifying darkness. Again, no exposition needed. There’s no explanation or backstory — just fear. As the son pleads to the unseen evil, the father in the truck quietly asks for forgiveness and locks the son out of the car. The clock strikes midnight, and the beast takes the boy away. It’s haunting, powerful and beautiful, with a runtime that is less than two minutes. Truly a fantastic piece of horror!

The next entry, “Descent”, falls into one of my favorite horror sub genres: elevator horror. 

From 2010’s Devil to 1983’s The Lift and everything in between, elevator horror is just something I cannot get enough of.

“Descent” follows the story of a young woman who goes to visit a friend who stood her up at the bar. When she gets to her apartment, she is shocked to find that her friend has been brutally murdered.  Even worse, the killer is still in the house.  She hides and watches him dismember her friend while whistling a catchy tune.  Suddenly, her phone rings in the living room. And when the killer goes to investigate, she escapes.

Flash forward six weeks, and the woman finds herself in a stuck elevator with the killer. She panics. He whistles. Her phone rings. This is amazing short form horror! We go from setup and premise to nail biting terror in a minute flat. This one gets fairly crazy and has some shocks and twists that I just refuse to spoil.

Much like many shorts in this anthology, the director has many more crew credits than directorial credits, so it’s difficult to seek them out and find other work.

To me, this is the best part of All Hallows Eve 2 as it is giving a spotlight to people in the film community that may not have had this spotlight any other way.

My absolute favorite is the final segment “Alexia”. Again, the director Andres Borghi has far more credits as a visual effects artist — and it really shows in this amazing short. The entire segment is almost entirely in text form as the main character sits in front of his PC having a chat with what appears to be an ex lover on Facebook. I say ‘appears’ because all of the text is in Spanish. Now, outside of a couple of dirty words, the ability to order la lingua tacos and a few words from Carlos Santana songs, my Spanish is fairly weak. But that doesn’t matter at all.  The entire short, I knew exactly what was going on.

“Mi Amor,” the man says to the woman, and you can tell from his response, his demeanor and his removal of her from his friends list that she doesn’t feel the same. Then, the computer starts acting funky, the mouse moves erratically, and Alexia crawls from behind the monitor into reality. The man runs outside and finds a friend, who he brings back to show the strange computer.

But little does he know, it’s all in his mind. And the woman turns into Alexia before the screen goes black and the credits roll. Absolutely amazing!

That’s the power of the horror short; you don’t need backstory or heavy exposition. In some cases, it doesn’t even have to be in your native tongue!

If the actor can convey true fear in a brief period of time, the short can be successful. And “Alexia”, like many of the shorts that make up this anthology, is quite successful in its execution and the way it makes the most of its short run time.

All Hallows Eve 2 is a fantastic halloween horror flick and one of the better anthology horrors I’ve seen. While I’ve only touched on a few of the entries here, they are all exceptional. From the micro-short about killer pumpkins called “Jack Attack” to the cringe-filled “Mr. Tricker’s Treats”, there is a bit of something for everyone.

If you’re looking for a fantastic, halloween-themed movie to watch this week, check out All Hallows Eve 2 now on Tubi.

Overall Rating (Out of 5 Butterflies): 4

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