I LOVE SARAH JANE: Sort of like GUMMO, with zombies

Zombies have been done to death (see what I did, there?), but Spencer Susser's short film I Love Sarah Jane is less about zombies and more about their terrible aftermath. Set in an Australian suburb sometime after a zombie outbreak has swept through the streets, the film follows a group of kids in a world without grown-ups. Jimbo is a little boy who rides his bike through streets full of smashed and broken things, spending his days hanging around with other boys whose unchecked youthful aggression is quickly giving way to cruel barbarism. Sarah Jane is the local girl he pines for, but even though he could literally be almost the last boy alive, she barely knows he exists.

This is a sharp and uncompromising horror short, hideously bloody one moment and heartbreaking the next. The violence is particularly unsettling because it seems so much like plausible kid behavior, but the little moments of human connection are effective because they feel so real, too. There's also lots and lots of swearing... Do I even need to tell you this is probably not safe for work? Susser's now at work on his feature debut Hesher, and Mia Wasikowska, the film's titular Sarah Jane, will soon have another title role as Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.