Movie Review: ZombieLand
If zombie movies are a sub genre of horror, then zombie comedies, or zom-com, are yet another sub genre of that. The first and best of these that I’ve seen was Shawn of the Dead, a movie that gleefully blended horror and comedy in equal measure. It had some really sickening gore, frantic pacing, and a hard edge that meshed perfectly with fine performances, slapstick comedy, and British accents. ZombieLand follows a similar formula, though not quite as successfully or cleverly. How exactly the zombie plague comes about is very much glossed over. It’s covered in just three or four voiceover lines, actually: first came mad cow disease, then mad people disease, then zombies. Really? That’s the best you’ve got? Okay, whatever, I suppose. On we go. In zombie movies, it’s always one of two scenarios. One, the people are trapped somewhere (house, as in Night of the Living Dead, mall, as in Day of the Dead), and the zombies are outside trying to get in, or two, the people are out in the world running around with the zombies (as in Shawn of the Dead or Resident Evil: Extinction). Every once in a while you’ll get movies that fit in both scenarios (28 Days Later, for instance). In ZombieLand it’s the second scenario. Our heroes, Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg, meet up and take off across country, looking for a box of Twinkies and their parents, respectively. Before long they meet up with Emma Stone (Superbad) and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), sisters with trust issues who are just trying to survive the apocalypse. The quartet finds their way across the ravaged countryside to California, where, after a side trip to Bill Murray’s house (Murray plays himself), they settle in for a climactic showdown at a fictional West Coast amusement park. Everything works pretty well, except no new ground is really broken. Eisenberg is completely interchangeable with Michael Cera, as the two of them are competing in Hollywood at the moment, seeing which one of them can snap up the most lovable-curly-haired-loser-who-still-inexplicably-gets-the-girl roles, although maybe in a country overrun with zombies, maybe it’s not inconceivable that Eisenberg might actually manage to get laid. Terror does strange things to a girl. Woody plays pretty much the same role that he always does, and the girls are more or less baggage. There was nothing really objectionable, other than the fact Shawn of the Dead already did this bit, and so much better. This time around it’s skewed more toward the humor side of things and less toward the gore. None of the principle characters are killed in the end. It’s a horror movie with a happy ending, and in my book, that actually disqualifies it from horror movie status. This is more like a comedy with a few zombies in it; minimal gore, and far too many shots in slow motion. It’s not that I disliked it. It’s just that I’ve liked similar movies a lot better, and this felt a little bit like a retread. My rating: 6/10