The product of an image.

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2014)

It happens to everyone. An obsession over an image. Anyone who does anything creative will know it can take as little as a single image to trigger an idea or a piece of writing or a poem. Or, in this case, an entire feature-length movie.
No actual names are used, instead places of origin. Colombus (Eisenberg) is a college student trying to find his parents in Ohio, Tallahassee (Herrelsen) is in a hunt for Twinkies (Natick anyone?) and on their journey they run into Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) who are trying to reach an amusement park supposedly free of zombies. And herein lies the obsession. The writers clearly had an image of zombies in a theme park and thought cool cool. Let's make zombies in a theme park. Cool. That's a cool idea. So, without any particular explanation, the loose story is set up to this climax. The writers can practically be heard screaming out how great their image is.
It is unclear whether Jesse Eisenberg was so good in The Social Network, that Mark Zuckerberg was such a defining role for him or that he is just not a particularly versatile actor. Because at best, the role feels like a warm-up for his uncannily good performance as Facebook's creator. Surely enough, as one point he mentions Facebook in the movies and then it is impossible to see anything but Zuckerberg. Woody Harrelsen does his tough guy, mouth too small for face, tongue too big for mouth performance but is absolutely not the best he has been as some have been saying. Try Kingpin or True Detective for some brilliant Woody Harrelsen.
Bill Murray is the film's high point in his cameo, but does seem like comedy filler. Like a large proportion of the movie, it is unnecessary. What is the most disappointing thing of all about Zombieland, however, is that it doesn't live up to its potential. The opening is pacey and exciting, immediately it screams new stance on the zombie franchise. Alas, it never builds on that promise and where it should have exploded, it peters out. A real shame.