Zombieland is a reasonable success

Rating: 7/10 (26 November 2009)

Set during a zombie raging apocalypse that has taken over America, a dopey teenage boy (Jesse Eisenberg) who wields a shotgun, describes the various rules to us that he has set out to survive the infestation. With such concrete guidelines for survival his meeting with a gun slinging psychopath (Woody Harrelson) with an appetite for Twinkies, is initially a hostile one. Refusing to exchange names they call each other by their destination. The kid is Columbus and the gunslinger is Tallahassee. They band together on the road and also find a pair of girls who are sisters. The oldest is Wichita (Emma Stone), who Columbus develops a crush on, and the other is named Little Rock (Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine).
Zombieland, directed by Ruben Fleischer, is not unlike Shaun of the Dead in that it parodies the clichés of the zombie genre to the point where it could be called and all out comedy rather than a horror movie. With a running time of barely ninety minutes the plot is not dissimilar to a series of sketches. The film immediately dumps the audience into the zombie apocalypse without any explanation for its occurrence and never seeks to develop any exposition for the outbreak. Similarly, much of the back-story for Eisenberg's character is told fairly lazily through his voice-over and a flashback detailing to us about how he used to be a video game addict and how he has always held a desire to have a girlfriend. This is not a film you would expect to have a great deal of character development beyond the most basic archetypal patterns and it correctly uploads these assumptions. All four of the main characters exist merely for the purpose of the gore and the laughs. To this extent, Zombieland is a reasonable success.
Somewhat surprisingly though, the film works better as a comedy than it does as an exercise in gore and zombie slaughter. There are a number of disgusting, grotesque and gruesome deaths but thankfully the film resides in its humour more than the action. The action sequences are not particularly exciting or intense and there are almost no scares to speak of. Their infrequency and brevity is thankful. How those who just want to see pure ultra violence and zombie dismemberment will respond to this is questionable. Though a lot of the humour is extremely silly, bordering on idiotic, there is no doubt that it is funny, even if it is for its own sense of oddity. A lot of the humour is provided through the contrast between the extremely geeky Columbus – a very different part to what he played in The Squid and the Whale - and the ultra serious Tallahassee who parodies his own tough persona and in one scene his appreciation for smoking pot. These actors seem to be having a lot of fun in their parts.
These self-references are not just limited to the actors themselves though but the entirety of American culture itself. One of the first rules Columbus tells us is about cardio and how the fatties were the first to perish in the zombie attacks and we see one of them run down and devoured by a flesh eating zombie in the opening stages. Likewise, when Tallahassee finds a car loaded with guns he screams, "Thank God for rednecks" and starts firing shots up in the air. Certainly the film's funniest scene though, which really ignites the second half of the picture with a number of other film references, is a cameo from a famous Hollywood actor as himself dressed as a zombie. It is a moment you want to see for yourself without it being spoilt. Despite these pop culture references and the certainty of the laughs, you may feel as though your IQ has dropped significantly after watching this film. It is funny but the humour couldn't really be regarded as deep satire. Certainly it does not have the same satirical strength as the first half of Shaun of the Dead, which was particularly fresh and original in the way that it juxtaposed the lethargy and laziness of British life with a zombie apocalypse.
Although this very silly, sometimes violent mixture of horror and comedy is largely forgettable, there is still fun to be had through the frequent laughs and the actors who seem to be greatly enjoying themselves. It may not add anything particularly new to a well-worn genre, but at least it is aware of its own silliness and does not take itself the least bit seriously, which is more than can be said for the last few George Romero zombie films.