Horror-101

More comedy than horror, yet one great ride… with zombies

written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick
directed by Ruben Fleischer

Let’s smash this one on the head right away: the post-modern zombie movie was born with 2004’s deft Shaun Of The Dead. That homage to the subgenre spawned by George A. Romero took a sharp turn away from serious melodrama, social commentary, and pessimistic world-view and instead brought us to new, comedic, absurdest territories. In contemporary cinema, zombies aren’t necessarily the threat they once where. With subsequent films and even books, such as Max Brook’s Zombie Survival Guide, the menace of a zombie horde has been prepared for, and its fictional apocalyptic premise has meshed into our cultural background. What’s left is a hilarious deconstruction and a realization than in a world overrun by zombies, we would still be preoccupied with our everyday obsessions: finding someone to trust, finding someone to love, or even just scoring some junk food. Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland gives us a much-needed laughter break from the cliched bummer concept of a zombie apocalypse. As a movie, it’s like a theme park… with zombies.

Corpses rising from the dead. Slow lumbering living dead hordes. Deadly bite that seals your fate. We’re past this. We’re over it. It’s been done before. Why not have a lot of fun instead? For geeky Columbus (Jesee Eisenberg, Cursed), the fun stopped when a pretty girl crashed at his place one night, only to turn into a drooling meat-muncher the next morning. For boisterous Tallahasee (Woody Harrelson, Natural Born Killers), the fun has just started. After all, what could be more fun than trashing everything and everyone in your path while questing for the last Twinkie on the planet?

The two polar opposites meet on a junked highway and start working on their mutual trust issues. Columbus has survived due to a set of rigidly observed but extremely savvy rules: Rule 1: Cardio, because the fatties were the first to go. Rule 2: Double tap to the head, because you gotta make sure its dead. Rule 3: Avoid bathrooms, because you don’t want to be eaten with your pants down. Tallahasee, meanwhile, survives by his instincts and his love of high-caliber firepower found in the back of abandoned redneck Hummers. The men form a contentious partnership when they come across two damsels in distress: Wichita (Emma Stone, Superbad) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine). The young ladies turn out to be veteran con artists, and they outsmart the men again and again. Columbus nurses a crush on Wichita that might just pan out for him if it weren’t for her skittishness. The group ends up reaching Los Angeles, where the movie shifts into playful mode, and the character conflicts take center stage while the zombies run amok in the background.

From its cool opening credit sequence to its superimposition of ‘the rules’ along the way, Zombieland presents itself as a deconstructionist, meta-comedy of the subgenre. It’s a smart gimmick that thankfully enhances the script. The briskly paced film hits many marks right, mixing successful character development with funny one-liners (”Time to nut up or shut up!”), but perhaps the flick’s coup de grace is a flooring cameo by Bill Murray, as himself, in one of the best cameos I’ve ever seen. Murray’s not afraid to mock himself as lonely celebrity haunting a desolate Hollywood mansion. He’s clearly enjoying himself, and so do we. Ruben Fleischer, whose short list of directing credits includes episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live, proves himself to know how to juggle horror and comedy. His movie is so endearing that you’re left wondering what the further adventures of this ragtag group of survivors might be like.

It’s a welcome change of scenery to see a flick take an upbeat approach to the characters coping in a world taken by such a catastrophe. So many of these films present us with a tired, depressing perspective in which people give in to their most base desires turning into either power-hungry megalomaniacs, amoral scientists, or rape-and-pillage para-military morons, that it’s a most welcome cinematic change to see a set of characters still be decent to one another in such a dire situation. Zombieland’s spirit is best encapsulated by the setting of the film’s final sequence, an amusement park, as the whole movie is designed as an amusing experience; a blood-soaked, hilarious joyride.