Short Film Review: Lunch Ladies (2017)

Written by Clarissa Jacobson and directed by J.M. Logan, Lunch Ladies is a horror/comedy short film that is in a class of its own when it comes to indie shorts. It has a running time of 18:50, which is only unfortunate because this was such a great horror short that we would have loved for it to have been a feature.

The story follows Seretta Burr (Donna Pieroni), and LouAnne Burr (Mary Manofsky) who are opening their mail in the car on the way to Melvin High School where they work as lunch ladies in the cafeteria. In that mail, they have received a letter informing them that they have won the grand prize in a “cook for kids” charity contest with their “Cheesy Burger Bites” recipe. The letter is from Johnny Depp himself who is their idol, and they dream of being his personal chef. Depp invites them to his concert and ceremony for the winners. Needless to say, Seretta and LouAnne are ecstatic and arrive at school on cloud 9.

Once they arrive at school, and lunch rolls around they are snapped back to reality when having to serve the ungrateful teenagers with some of the grossest-looking food you will see. The kitchen looks disgusting. They are just trying to make it through the day without reaching it, but these lunch ladies are at their breaking point. One in particular named Alexis (Daisy Kershaw) makes sure to give them a hard time.

Without giving too much away, the lunch ladies basically have to cook up a plan to save their jobs by the next day for “Surprise Friday” lunch at the cafeteria as the principal has threatened to replace them if they don’t. This would result in them not only being fired, but also not being able to make it to their ceremony concert event with Johnny Depp, and they aren’t about to let that happen.

The quality of this film is amazing. Everything from the writing and acting, to the set design, sound, and cinematography were perfect. It couldn’t have been better. It felt like a big-budget film you would see in the theater. It also had a sort of 90’s vibe which was a welcome surprise and they did a fantastic job of capturing the essence of that time. Huge kudos to the cast and crew here for such a great job all around. This would have been really enjoyable as a feature-length film, and we would love to see this happen.

Overall, Lunch Ladies is one of the best horror short films we have ever seen. It has just about everything you want to see in a horror/comedy and executed to perfection. We absolutely recommend this to any fan of horror/comedy films, or either. It’s good enough to please the taste of just about anyone.

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