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Review: Zombieland

By Kirsty Leckie Palmer
Modnay 2nd November 2009
The current cinematic appetite for flesh has been given a sprinkling of buddy-movie, a twist of absurdity and sautéed in the essence of boy-meets girl indie flick in a surprisingly tasty treat from box-fresh director Ruben Fleischer. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is a self-sufficient college student who has devised a list of rules which have somehow helped him survive a zombie-riddled apocalypse (caused by a mutant strain of mad cow disease). Encountering the chronically-infuriated and utterly reckless Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) on his trek across the states to his hometown, a faltering bromance develops as they encounter two conniving sisters who’ll do anything to survive, whilst trying to find hard man Tallahassee the last Twinkie on earth before the use-by-date expires. As the first mainstream comedic take on zombies since Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland never quite approaches the wonder that is Nick Frost and Simon Pegg frantically flinging Dire Straits and Sade vinyls at the heedless drooling visages of stray cannibalistic corpses. However, it’s a different strain of humour, achieved not from the incongruity of its protagonists to their situation, but from the joy they derive from being seasoned survivalists, with ‘zombie kill of the week’ and audacious, gung-ho vigilantism detracting from any real threat posed by the plague-infested mutants. The zombies contribute to the humour, as expendable clowns be despatched in variously idiosyncratic ways, indeed one of the zombies is a clown, just to qualify one of Cleveland’s many irrational phobias. An innovative visual aspect is the superimposition of Cleveland’s rules, as he kills the zombies, onto the film; with a whiff of proving-a-point-pedantry that’s fairly well aligned with the outlook of a geek zombie slayer. Throw in a forgivably self-interested cameo from Bill Murray, the formulaic (but fun) brute-force-meets-astute-force dynamic between Tallahassee and Cleveland, and a genial, expansive handling of a very silly subject. The result is a popcorn-friendly film that remembers not to take itself too seriously; its well-paced wit and clear populist agenda keep things simple, which is exactly what we want when it’s the end of the world. 


 Rating: 4 stars