Vaunted but overpraised horror comedy, which is too wild and referential to really enjoy

Rating: 5/10 (7 March 2018)

"Zombieland" is a post-modern explosion of all things pop-culture and something else. I lost count of the number of references, both visual and oral, I recognised from films and times gone by; of the number of homages to things which have peppered not only my film-watching life thus far, but life generally. Present is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; "Caddyshack"; George A. Romero; Ennio Morricone; "Babe"; Willy Nelson and, amongst other things, some film from the 1980's starring Bill Murray about what appear to be four exorcists...
The film is, ultimately, a horror film to be enjoyed most by people who, I think, do not especially like horror films; a film whose terror, sense of hopelessness, violence and gore is strangely distilled through a filter of comedy and chaos. It is as if there is someone watching the film with you holding your hand, constantly reminding you that everything will be OK in the end. The burning question is as to whether films such as these (post-modern rollercoasters of jokes and references to the bulwark of the last 50 years of mainstream entertainment, which just happens to be a generic zombie virus infestation flick at the same time) are at all good for cinema. In my opinion, they are not.
Jesse Eisenberg plays a nerdy, sexually frustrated loner who's studying at a university in Texas and who, through his complete lack of a social life and difficulties with his extended family, misses out entirely on the zombie apocalypse. Mortified, in his own unique way, upon discovering the end of the world, and coming to observe a strict set of survival rules, he takes it on himself to travel back to Ohio to see if anything remains of his family and hometown. This, he surmises, will be enough to win his parents' respect should they still be alive, who looked down on him for not yet acquiring a girlfriend.
Along the way, complications arise in the form of a cocksure cowboy played by Woody Harrelson - somebody whose approach is very different to Eisenberg's and who is desperate, besides everything else, to get his hands on a Twinkie. They are later joined by a pair of con-artist played by Emma Stone and her twelve year old sister, played by Abigail Breslin. Stone forces her sister to live to a similarly strict set of regulations, that they should trust no one and assume that, from now on, it is just the two of them against the world.
The road trip makes for a mostly uninteresting, although occasionally funny, adventure which mutates into a romance between the Eisenberg and Stone characters and their being forced into revising predetermined outlooks on other people and the world around them. The film is not, however, kept on enough of a leash for it to really be particularly special. A sense of desperation is lacking. Many films tackling this premise, from "Night of the Living Dead" and "28 Days Later" to "The Road" and "Shaun of the Dead", are afforded degrees of chaos and disorder as civilisation has been destroyed and characters in the film are relegated to making it up as they go along. But "Zombieland" lacks peril, and it distils the horror of its characters' predicament through the brashness of Harrelson's character who doesn't appear frightened of anything. If he isn't scared, why should WE be?
The shallowness of most of it is exposed near the midway point when, upon learning of his hometown's annihilation, Eisenberg's void existence in the universe is filled by his making it his quest to bed Emma Stone's character. The film, you will have no doubt worked out, and despite providing its characters with a Tarkovsky-esque palette upon which to contemplate the meaning of life and man's place in the universe as they live through the apocalypse, is not especially deep...
Eventually, director Ruben Fleischer forces his leads to mutate, not into the un-dead, but certainly into people more reminiscent of human-beings and less shut off from stringent habits. A hermit and a loner at university, Eisenberg learns lessons about opening up to others and being more sociable, while Stone realises that there might be more to this post-apocalyptic world than merely thieving from other people and condensing the rest of the wild world to her and her sister.
Irrespective, the character narrative is heavy-going and simplistic - the film is more interested in flashes of popular culture; zombie-gore and a particularly bizarre sequence whereby everyone holes up in a Los Angeles mansion for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than for the fact it belongs to whom it does.
In its barest form, the film is a kinetic series of colourful splatter sequences enabling the meek Jesse Eisenberg and the self-assured Woody Harrelson to smash up a number of zombies in a variety of different ways. Most audiences have taken to this, but two or three haven't - one critic reaches the firm conclusion that the film has one goal: "...to entertain the pants off of you!" and recommends the film, whereas another deduces a similar train of thought in dismissing it as "...an okay DVD rental choice but (nothing) beyond that" and gives it a lower rating. It would be wrong to label the film in any way dull, but it is certainly lacking in substance to back up its ultra-assertive style.