Zombieland
Constantly I see it said again and again on message boards and in reviews: zombies are done to death. The fad is played out. I can’t stand to see another zombie movie. Perhaps that is true for the person saying it, but for me zombies are the white rice of horror monsters. Just like it is easy to mix any vegetable, any sauce, any entrée with rice, it is easy to mix comedy, social commentary, action, or even romance with zombies. Heck, I’ve even seen WW2 zombies (Hellboy, Dead Snow), superhero zombies (Marvel Zombies, Blackest Night) and zombies as pets (see Fido as soon as possible). In other words I don’t hate zombies at all, I just expect you to give me something good with it.
Based on the trailers Zombieland looked like the minute rice of zombie films, a completely idiotic zombie shoot ‘em up that cannibalizes all the movies that came before it. And actually all this is true, but the movie is also really funny, fast paced and immersive, so it is easy to forget that you are filling up on hollow calories.
The movie starts with an exposition heavy explanation of why the world is overrun by the undead and how the main hero has survived up until now, but this voice over accompanies a series of instructional video like sketches involving gruesome zombie attacks, so it is actually one of the better parts of the movie. Even the opening credits are zombie enhanced, with a slow motion montage of people getting slaughtered by the undead set to Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
Similar to a level of Left 4 Dead, four survivors going in different directions decide to join forces to make the trip across the remains of Texas less dangerous. Well, this is not counting all the times they backstab and rip each other off, but it happens often enough that you learn to ignore it, as do the main characters. All of them have decided not to exchange names, so they are known as Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg),
And beyond that I don’t know what to say really… they pick up tons of guns, shoot lots of zombies, crack a bunch of jokes and maybe a little bit of romance blossoms along the way. It is actually a really short movie, and the big climax you saw in the trailers happens right when you thought you where starting to get bored. You never feel that anyone is in any serious danger, but you do laugh and applaud at their heroic feats. Predictable as it is, nothing prepared me for the one scene that rubbed me the wrong way, that being Columbus and his gang of white kids demolishing a Native American gift shop. I could say a lot of things about the symbolism in his code name and what they do, but if it is not obvious to you when you see it then you will think my views on characters celebrating the death of “white guilt” are a real stretch.
Overall I don’t think it has the heart that Shaun of the Dead did, nor the brains of Dawn of the Dead, but it has a whole lot of balls and redneck swagger, and unless you hate the movie before seeing it odds are you will be thoroughly entertained. I mean who would not? It makes living in a decimated, post apocalyptic