Since the beginning of the genre, the surefire cure for a zombie attack has been a shotgun shell to the flesh-eating head. ""Zombieland"" celebrates this element of the zombie film in all its glory. The resulting film strips away a lot of the darker themes and deeper ideas at work in most zombie flicks, it still makes for a crowd-pleasing, gut-wrenching splatterfest.
""Zombieland"" plays on our expectations of the zombie genre by messing with the clichés—""patient zero"" isn't a victim of corporate bio-weapon development, but a bad batch of hamburger meat that creates a mutated strain of mad cow disease in humans. Naturally, a zombie apocalypse results, leaving the few remaining humans to struggle for survival.
Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg, ""Adventureland"") survives the apocalypse by virtue of his neuroses. He was locked in his apartment playing ""World of Warcraft"" when, against his better judgment, he opened his door for his hot neighbor. Moments later, he found himself fighting an Amber Heard zombie with the ceramic cover of his toilet. From there on out, he resolved to follow a strict list of rules to survive. Rule #3: ""Avoid bathrooms.""
Each of these rules provides a hard laugh and adds to the tongue-in-cheek tone of the film's stylistic violence—each rule swings into the shot like a road sign, labeling each moment in the film as a vignette demonstrating why certain rules are in place. A panicked mother roars away from a zombified gaggle of neighborhood children, only to hit a semi at 50 miles per hour and crack her skull open on the pavement; Rule #4 rolls on screen—""Buckle up.""
Columbus breaks his loner streak to team up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a sadistic, zombie-killing machine. Tallahassee kills the undead masses with chainsaws, pickaxes, pistols and banjos. His weakness is his endless search for Twinkies, which lands him and Columbus in a bind when conning sisters Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) trick the pair into giving up their truck and guns during a raid of a grocery store junk food aisle. Eventually the four are forced by circumstance to team up to survive, and they oddly resolve to embark on a road trip to a theme park in California.
Like many zombie films, ""Zombieland"" struggles to stay interesting when there aren't any zombies to fight. There are some great characterizing moments when they're all stuck in the car driving toward Pacific Funland—one highlight includes Little Rock explaining the logistics of Hannah Montana to a baffled Tallahassee. And some fun misadventures ensue when the gang decides to hole up in Bill Murray's mansion in Hollywood. But most of the time we're waiting to get back to the action. Stripping away the doom and gloom of films like ""28 Days Later"" makes ""Zombieland"" more light and accessible, but also more disposable.
Watching Woody Harrelson shoot zombies as they pop up along the track of a rollercoaster and seeing Jesse Eisenberg crush a clown zombie's face with a giant wooden mallet will cause your average zombie fan to grin with unbridled glee. But those looking for a deep examination of apocalyptic mortality may want to look elsewhere—this movie is in the business of pure zombie killin', and brother, business is booming.
Grade: AB
