Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Directed by: Ruben Fleischer

It’s a question as old as the genre itself; How would you survive the zombie apocolypse? This simple question forms the premise of Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland. Not concerned with the origins of the walking dead (although it does get mentioned), Zombieland is purely about the struggle of staying alive once the majority had turned zombie. Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus (Because that’s where he’s headed. People don’t use their names, just the names of the places they’re going/have come from.) one of the few remaining actual people who scratch out a living by moving from place to place scavenging supplies and avoiding the hoards of zombies. Things go wrong… well right… but wrong, when he meets Tallahassee (Harrelson) and then Witchita (Stone) and her sister Little Rock (Breslin) and the group head out to the west coast… to visit a theme park.

While conforming to much of the zombie genre’s fundamentals, Zombieland is pretty original and that’s for three reasons. Firstly, like I said before it’s not an origin story. Much like Dawn of the Dead (the original) and it’s sequels, it lands you right in the midst of a zombie apocalypse that is well under way. That’s good because, well how many times can you watch the same thing happen? Next, it’s narrated. As if in some gruesome version of The Wonder Years, Columbus narrates the movie and relates the events to his own, post Z-Day experiences using a series of “rules” to which he attributes his own survival. Finally, it doesn’t shy away from what it is. unlike some zombie movies of recent years, Zombieland freely embraces the fact it it a black comedy first and a horror movie second. I might get hated on for this but George A Romero never pulled off this balance as well as Fleischer has with Zombieland.

Combine those plus points with the fact that it covers one of the horror genre’s best loved subject matters and you can’t deny you’re on to a winner. The final goal in the hat trick is the casting. Woody Harrelson was born for this stuff. I’ve wanted to see him make something like this ever since the first time I saw Natural Born Killers and he hasn’t disappointed. Michael Cera‘s apparent acting twin Jesse Eisenberg played the fragile geek with a bubble wrapped balls-of-steel attitude with aplomb and held the foursome together better than the plot ever could.

My only real complaint was with some of the plot holes. Now, I know it’s a comedy and a zombie comedy at that so my suspension of disbelief should have been, and was, off the charts but… Why was there working electricity everywhere? Why would people who are apparent experts in zombie survival head to one of the most populated cities in the country? Guns never running out of bullets until the plot called for it and the gang choosing a vehicle that does 4 MPG for a cross country trip where most petrol stations will be dry… these things can be overlooked but some plot holes aren’t so easily filled. This complaint is minor, however and I can only dock the movie a couple of marks for it. The rest is just so damn fun!

Now on to the effects. These were pulled off with great success. Things were done exactly the way they should be. The only CGI was used to enhance the gore of the gang’s attempts to score Zombie Kill of the Week and to overlay, in a really cool way, some of Columbus’ golden rules. The rest was makeup and high speed camera work. I honestly have no complaints here.

So all in all, Zombieland is one of the biggest sleeper hits of the year. I honestly count it as one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in the last 12 months. Go see it, forget reality for 90 minutes and have a great time doing so.

Verdict: