From 2013, All Hallows’ Eve jelled as an anthology because of the unifying touch of Damien Leone. It’s not that he’s an infallible filmmaker (as 2015’s Frankenstein vs. the Mummy proves), but that he was the single creative force behind its segments. For the inevitable All Hallows’ Eve 2, however, Leone is credited only as a producer — one of 36 (!), in fact — and each of the eight stories contained within comes from a different director. Unlike the recent Tales of Halloween, they were not created for this movie; like the recent Zombieworld, many are even several years old.

In the original Eve’s wraparound, a babysitter found a mysterious VHS tape delivered to her; here, it’s a plump-lipped honey (Andrea Monier, Day of the Mummy) in lingerie and with a glass of merlot. Because of course she still owns a VCR, she watches it instead of the knife-wielding, pumpkin-masked trickster (Damien Monier, 2010’s Grim) standing outside her apartment. We see what she sees: one great short followed by seven that are not.

How curious it is to have unquestionably the strongest segment kick off the collection: “Jack Attack,” by Bryan Norton and Antonio Padovan, is the story of a boy, his babysitter and the pumpkin they carve, all ending in a wonderful twist flavored heavily with equal pinches of EC and WTF. Much of what follows is bound to disappoint viewers; at the same time, no subsequent portion is so bad to touch incompetence, no matter how low the budgets go. I’m more put off by the fact that half of them have nothing to do with Halloween. Notable among one of those (but not for the right reasons) is Elias Benavidez’s “A Boy’s Life,” which recalls The Babadook and Home Alone … and complete predictability. —Rod Lott

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