Breaking the Rules of Horror

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2011)

Accepting the offer refused by the master of horror, John Carpenter, virtually unknown filmmaker Ruben Fleisher directs a very capable cast consisting of three future A-listers in Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, as well as the ever-reliable and extremely underrated Woody Harrelson in horror-comedy Zombieland, an enjoyable take on a genre screaming out for some mainstream originality.
The film centres around Columbus (Eisenberg), a young man living in solitude, believing he is the only person remaining on a planet overrun by the undead. His chances of survival, as well as the opportunity to gain the closest thing he's ever had to a real family, increase upon meeting the trigger-happy Tallahassee and con artist sisters Wichita and Little Rock, all of whom decide to stick together and fend off the zombies as a unit.
In a film full of positives, the most refreshing aspect of Zombieland is the way in which it injects brains into a genre typically lacking in any at all. Where most films of this nature usually consist of young, good-looking teenagers screaming and running for two hours, Columbus couldn't be more different from these stereotypes. He understands that to survive in Zombieland you need things like cardio (Rule #1), seatbelts at all times (Rule #4) and, if in doubt, double tap (Rule #2) to turn a 'maybe' kill into a 'definite' kill.
This is conveyed best in the opening scene. Running from a couple of zombies, Columbus comes across a car. Fumbling to get the keys into the lock on the door, he sees that his predators are making ground quickly, so he gives up on the keys, lets them chase him around the car park once more so he can again distance himself from them (Rule #1), then returns to find that the car door was unlocked the whole time. It almost feels as if Fleisher sat down, watched a heap of B-grade horrors and thought 'I'm going to make a movie where no-one in the audience will be able to say, "If they just did X, then they wouldn't have been killed by Y."' As I said, very refreshing, and very funny.
Speaking of funny, the bulk of the laughs unsurprisingly come from Tallahassee, a loose screw whose hatred of zombies is surpassed only by his love of Twinkies. Apparently quite the movie buff to boot, he'll make you laugh in a scene you didn't expect to find funny with a Babe reference, and his particularly unsettling banjo tunes (followed by a compliment no-one would ever want to receive) leave you certain he'd be first in line for a Deliverance remake. Oh, and on top of all that, there's the cameo to end all cameos.
For all the competence in the acting department, the film does falter in the Third Act. What was built up as something of a road-trip movie with the occasional assassination along the way turns into an absolute kill-fest in the final fifteen minutes. Sure, it's watchable, but really couldn't be further from the established tone of the film. The ending is ultimately predictable, but this is a minor gripe of mine considering one of the hardest tasks to undertake in filmmaking is to create a satisfying and unique conclusion to a dystopian film, regardless of genre.
Comedy in various forms comes through thick and fast, but it is the film's brave steps forward to eradicate some of the most stale of horror clichés, as well as offering a range of individualist characters who are all likable in some way, that tips Zombieland from the 'average' into the 'pretty good' category.