Okay…everybody sit down and strap in, because I’ve got an AMAZING find for you today.  No, seriously—I know I’ve said that before, and I’ve generally been, well, RIGHT, but today is an extra special case.

I have found an early short film from none other than Kevin Greutert.  And if that name sounds familiar, then good for you—because you recognize the name of the guy who’s going to be directing Saw VI this October.  And once you get done enjoying a round of his short Old Friends, chances are you’ll have a whole lot more faith in Saw VI than you did beforehand.

Old Friends follows a family in suburban California in the midst of a bird flu pandemic.  Thankfully, the head of the household was an inveterate hoarder, and kept a massive stock of earthquake readiness supplies on hand, including things like generators and an alcohol stove to distill the water in his hot tub into a potable alternative.  Of course, it really doesn’t help things that his daughter is a shrill, evil little tweenage girl, and you know how shrill and evil tweenage girls can get.  Yeah, I know—it’s downright scary sometimes.  But anyway, the family of three is trying to live as best they can by staying in their house, which they’ve boarded up and even booby trapped throughout just to ensure their safety.  But old friends of the family weren’t so well-prepared…and they know about our valiant hubby’s supplies.  You can just about imagine where it goes from there.

Despite the fact that Old Friends is only about fifteen minutes long, it’s got a wealth of interesting information buried in it, as well as absolutely maximum horror.  Why?  Simple—it’s so spectacularly PLAUSIBLE.

When one of the titular old friends comes around, and valiant hubby reminds him that there are FEMA food drops in a downtown park, the old friend insists they’re impossible to reach—after all, who wants to “fight through a million gangbangers for a sack of rice”?  And maybe you’ve got food stocked up for weeks upon, but what do you do with all the hours in a day when you’re in the suburbs?  You sure can’t go to work—leaving your home becomes a very dangerous proposition.  You can forget going out to a club or a museum or even to rent a movie for the exact same reason.  Maybe if you lived in the country you’d occupy some of your day with agriculture or something, grow some food, raise some chickens, what have you—but even this wouldn’t last all day, every day.  And you’re definitely not going to grow a whole lot of food in your suburban backyard where your neighbors are maybe twenty feet away, if you’re lucky.

That is, of course, unless you don’t MIND having all your food stolen as soon as it gets ripe.

Maybe you don’t think it’s plausible that, in a desperate survival situation, people would descend into barbarism for the sake of food.  The question that remains, of course, is do you want to take that chance?

Relevant social issues aside, Old Friends proves to be a spectacularly scary title because it combines absolute plausibility with absolute calamity, making you look twice at virtually everyone you know as you wonder, could THEY do that to ME?

And who knows?

Maybe they could.