Sundance 2008 Short Film Patrol: I Love Sarah Jane
Today is the first day of Sundance’s 10 Shorts 10 Days, and the first short film to stream for free for a day is Director Spencer Susser’s darkly funny charmer, I Love Sarah Jane. Tomorrow there will be another short will be streaming for free, so head there now to check it out.
The zombie movie has thrived in recent years, with re-imaginings from 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead, and is still being successfully tweaked—as this Australian import shows. Shot digitally using the Thomson HD Viper Camera, I Love Sarah Jane is set in a parent-free neighborhood where the adults are either dead or undead. Without anyone to tell the kids to clean up the house, it just isn’t going to happen.
I joke, but what makes Susser’s film so effective is the matter-of-fact way that the kids deal with their bleak situation. It’s nothing special to anyone to be carrying a bow with a quiver of arrows on your back like 13-year old Jimbo does. That’s just survival. Dark clouds loom—literally—overhead as he rides his bike around a trash-strewn, smoldering street. Amidst this awful backdrop blooms a chance for love—at least in Jimbo’s head. As a bored Sarah Jane watches a newscaster on TV describe the proper way to handle undead body disposal (incineration, of course), Jimbo sits down to make his move. Read On at Scene-Stealers.com
