Cadaver (Jonah Ansell, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Truman Kewley. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Cadaver is a animated short film written and directed by Jonah D. Ansell.  The animation was extremely well done and was the perfect style for this sort of story.   The animations style was interesting and not typical animation.   Cadaver opens up in a mortuary where a young woman is about to start cleaning out the body of an old man.  Once the woman removes the old mans heart he awakens from the dead to reveal he has unfinished love to attend to.

Jonah’s ability to create such a wonderful heart warming story with such a smooth style truly amazed me.  The story was created from a poem Jonah wrote for his sister in med school when she was nervous about working with cadavers for the first time.  Years later he picked up that very poem and realized it would make for a wonderful animated short.   Threw out the fill the dialog is continually rhyming.

After the short was over Jonah and one of his producers came on stage for a Q and A.  Here he revealed that they will be making a feature out of this short story.    The problem the film makers have now is to decide whether or not to make the feature a musical considering the short is a musical.  Jonah appears to be a hard worker and I can’t wait to see the feature product.

The form of the story telling was very original and interesting.  The other animated shorts in this section were not as entertaining as Cadaver.  Cadaver kelp me invested in the short and left me feeling good and wanting more.  If the rhyming wasn’t as good as it was the film would have been less attractive but Jonah has a real talent of word play.  The score of the film was very interesting as well and worked perfect for this film.

Cadaver is a great short and I would definitely recommend seeing it.  If you like poetry, animation, and a nice heart warming story, you will like this film.  I am for sure going to keep my eye out for any news on the feature Jonah and his team are now producing.