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With the rising popularity of Mia Wasikowska taking the
reigns of Alice in Tim Burton's 2010 revival of "Alice in Wonderland,"
and her show stopping performance in the HBO series "In Treatment," I
took a second look at Spencer Susser's science fiction horror short "I
Love Sarah Jane," a very good epilogue to a larger story I originally
reviewed for Film Threat in 2008 for the Sundance internet short
showcase. "I Love Sarah Jane" is a teen romance set in the
post-apocalyptic world overrun by the walking dead. Brad Ashby plays
Jimbo, a young boy who has carte blanche of his neighborhood, now in
ruins, and decides to pay a visit to his crush Sarah Jane's house. With
the infection's ability to consume only adults, now kids are running the
show and Jimbo must contend with the neighborhood bullies who are ruling
the houses and demonstrating their bravery by toying with a strapped
down zombie who they insist on shooting at and playing with. Jimbo only
has Sarah Jane on his mind and pays her a visit.
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In typical fashion, Wasikowska plays Sarah
Jane with immense zeal, this traumatized angry young girl
who has seen a lot and was forced to destroy her family. Now
she holds up in her house watching the world crumble on
television. Jimbo of course can not help but fawn over her
even after his whole family has wasted away as the walking
dead. Susser's film is considerably low budget thus he can't
exactly spend most of his time expanding upon the world
these children live in. |
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Therefore he uses it
wisely establishing this war zone and saving the pay off for one
particularly grotesque zombie (featuring some rather incredible
special effects for a low budget short) used as a toy for the
neighborhood kids. But when all is said and done, kids are kids and
Jimbo is only focused on being around Sarah Jane who looks to be
alone and wallow in the regret of her past doing things she was not
proud of to survive. As is typical in the horror genre, things get
out of hand and we're inevitably drawn in to a situation where we'll
learn soon enough who among this young clan will survive to see old
age and who will fall under the infection of the zombie rampage. As
for Jimbo, he's fallen for Sarah Jane and we see why in the final
scenes where she elicits some swift mercy that she does with the
justification of a warrior woman. This is how the zombie sub-genre
should be.
Mostly going unnoticed save for showing in compilation
programs at the IFC channel here in America, the Austrailian "I Love
Sarah Jane" is an entertaining tween romance set to the backdrop of the
zombie apocalypse and one worth watching if only for Mia Wasikowska who
is destined for great things.
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