7 stories to not Rest In Peace, Don’t Rip vol. 2 is a collection of shorts that are thrilling and chilling to the bone.

Begging won’t get you anything in this horror film! Available for home viewing, Don’t Rip vol. 2 is written and directed by various filmmakers and produced by Giacomo Ioannisci’s production company, Home Movies, as a follow up to the 2015 feature Don’t Rip vol. 1. Like its predecessor, Don’t Rip vol. 2 is a composed of several shorts featuring eerie and thrilling storylines for our viewing pleasure. Upon writing this review I have not yet seen Volume 1, but the quality found in Volume 2 from start to finish has definitely put Volume 1 on my ever-growing watchlist queue.

The first short was an impressive opener directed by Giulio Manicardi, called Like, where we are given a peek into the dealings of our antihero, Jerry (Antonio Pauletta), a family man with a dark and taboo sexual proclivity. After we learn of his sin, we soon find him somehow chained to a chair, gagged and screaming in front of a lone Canon video camera. Beside him stands a mysterious man in a suit and black mask, who walks towards the camera, welcoming an unseen streaming audience tuning in to watch. He begins his gameshow-like kangaroo court by listing Jerry’s crimes and allowing him to plead to the audience for his life, but as a screen tallying likes and dislikes, reflecting whether he should live or die for his sins, reads in favor of dislike, the mysterious man is not only courtroom host, but the executioner, and dispatches Jerry from the earth for his crimes. Other shorts followed afterward, each more tense than that last!

The second story, titled In Umbra Rosae, directed by Dario Almerighi, is a hushed thriller about past lovers separated by the cloth of the Catholic church. When the woman visits the church to make one last plea for their love, he turns her away, revealing a deadly and grotesque fetish for the dead. The next short brings us to director Dan Blasterio’s Persona, which was a raw, surprise femme fatale feature about motherhood and the horrifying frustration of obligations. That short is followed by Felice Antignani’s Sottopelle, another short about self-sacrificing for the sake of family, only more gruesome and dark while it touches on the horrors of poverty and corporate malfeasance. Other shorts followed to round out the film — Ila Scattina’s Il Gatto Di Schrodinger (or The Schrodinger Cat), about the horror of familial betrayal, Daniele Zinelli’s Es about the horrors of financial instability and how that leads to personal vulnerability, and Francesco Longo’s Claustrophobia, about a woman trying to escape the clutches of kidnapping killers chasing her through the narrow halls of their lair. It was a wild ride through each short, with the film growing more gruesome and frightening with each new chapter.

Don’t Rip vol. 2 was a breath of fresh air — socially impactful with the content in its stories, interesting use of sound and music, and moving performances from every actor in every single short. It was a collective effort from multiple directors but each director made use of tracking shots and close framing to capture emotion — these techniques pieced together with great editing made each short exciting and feel like a separate viewing in itself, keeping me engaged in each storyline. Moreover, each story’s premise was interesting, starring deeply flawed antiheroes in various states of being stuck in their respective situations, and no way of getting out of them. More thriller than horror, Don’t Rip vol. 2 is a showcase of how brilliant a compact short can be, boasting complete narratives that would make great feature-length films. Each short touched on personal and societal anxieties, tackling suicide, hypocrisy in the Catholic church, the black market for organs, and the precarious existence of living in poverty.  The shorts Like and Es were particularly impressive to me, downright creepy thanks to heavy, atmospheric musical scores paired with intense acting from their starring antiheroes, Antonio Pauletta and Marco Soccol, respectively.