CAST: Woody Harrelson, Jessie Eisenberg, Emma Stone,
Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray, Amber Heard
CLASSIFICATION: 16VL
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
RATING: ***
Viciously funny, frightening and more than a little irreverent, Zombieland never takes itself seriously, thereby proving the zombie film genre ain't dead by a long shot.
Set in a not-too-far-off future America over-run by the undead, it skates on that fine line between comedy and scary thriller without descending into farce. The zombies are scary and the danger is real... but the lurching undead make such great cannon fodder for wanton destruction and sight gags, it's cruel not to laugh.
First-time director Ruben Fleischer doesn't waste time explaining how things came to be, he simply drops his characters beyond Judgement Day and sets them off on a road trip.
Wimpy Columbus (Eisenberg) has managed to survive by rigorously following a set of rules which include No 1 Cardio. (The first ones to go were the fatties.) Or No 2 Double Tap. (In those moments when you're not sure, don't be stingy with your bullets.)
He hooks up on a deserted road with the wild-eyed Tallahassee (Harrelson), a bad-ass in desperate search of a Twinkie. The only thing the rather abrasive character is more obsessed with than killing zombies is finding the golden sponge cake with the creamy filling before the last one expires.
They meet femme fatale Wichita (Stone) and feisty teen Little Rock (Abigail Breslin comes off better in her sci-fi foray than Dakota Fanning did in Push) and, for want of something better to do, head for the Pacific Playland amusement park in LA.
Wichita would like to remind her sister of a cherished childhood memory in a post- apocalyptic world where they can do anything they want to.
The gory bits come thick and fast and as you become inured to the flying body parts you start to sense what the characters are really afraid of. They're stuck in a new world with new rules, separated from everything and everyone that ever made them feel safe.
Life as they knew it is gone and no one's going to save them.
It's macabre and runs on a manic energy and plenty of zombies for shooting practice. By the time the ending rolls around you actually care what happens to the characters and you had lots of scary fun getting to that point.
If you liked... Shaun Of The Dead... you will like this
BEST ZOMBIE MOVIES
28 Days Later (2002) subverted the idea that zombies had to be affected physically, making a virus affect people psychologically. Uncontrollable rage became an excellent metaphor for modern-day social rage (like road rage).
With Shaun of the Dead (2004) (pictured) Edgar Wright showed it is possible to merge comedy and horror. Best scene: when they try to decide which LPs to throw at the zombies.
LoTR's Peter Jackson did a zombie movie called Braindead aka Dead Alive in 1992. He went for campy fun with a priest that utters: "I kick ass for the Lord" and it turns out going after the zombies with a lawnmower actually works.
George Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead created the shuffling undead and is a classic.
With Dawn of the Dead (1978), Romero used people trapped in a mall to comment on consumerism, with the survivors hoarding goods they couldn't ever need. He cleverly created a critique on the behaviour of people in a post-apocalyptic situation, while scaring the living bejezuz out of the viewers.
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