Come On Down To ZOMBIELAND – Ed's Review

Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘On Being Ill’ contained a magical sentence that celebrated sickness as a perception skewering, spiritually emancipating experience. “How astonishing” she wrote, “when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed.” Wonderful words but Zombieland, or Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road if he’d written it in the middle of a games arcade, doesn’t really give a shit about the human condition when its survival is threatened. It’s a film about the things that really matter – movies, your favourite snacks and meeting the right girl – a girl who isn’t going to tear a chunk of flesh from your neck.

This feel good movie about the end of civilisation as we know it revives that old pub debate, y‘know the one you never had, about what manor of man might survive the zombie apocalypse. The answer is reassuring, and probably accurate. Society’s fat – its professionals, politicians, liberals, obese, annoying children, service staff and film journalists, has been well and truly burnt off by a virus that’s laid waste to a once bloated America. A wonderful opening titles sequence explains why the bulk of our brothers and sisters may not have made it. One woman, for example, captured in slow motion as she runs from a ravenous infected, hasn’t even thought to drop her latte. Conformity and extinction, it seems, go hand in hand.

So who has survived? “Columbus” (Jesse Eisenberg) so named because he originates from that part of Ohio not because of a love for 15th century sailing ships, is a geek. He’s never been comfortable with the world, he’s sexually and socially awkward plus he’s a loner – a World of Warcraft addict; his family a bunch of atomised social lepers. So with no buy in to the world as it was, he’s adapted quickly to the new one, inventing a series of rules from “double tap” (always ensure the zombie is dead with a second hit/shot) to “always wear a seatbelt.” Good advice in any reality. Then there’s Woody Harrelson’s “Tallahassee” – an unreconstructed cowboy whose love of high calorie foods and guns would have made him a pariah in polite society, but who now finds himself King in a world full of people less intelligent and less dexterous than he. You probably know the feeling. No? Well stick with it. The ladies, “Wichita” and “Little Rock” (Emma Stone & Abigail Breslin) are a pair of con artists; reduced to small scams prior to the outbreak but better suited to the cutthroat world of zombie survival. This is essentially the rump of humanity and you’d be hard pushed to argue it’s anything less than perfect.

Columbus is our guide to this new world in which the only laws are his own and the most common reference point, the humble video game, from which Zombieland takes many of its visual cues. In fact this blood splattered, pump action universe of deserted cities and diseased citizens wandering into view only to be run over, head smashed or shot to death, plays like a masturbatory fantasy for Grand Theft Auto aficionados. The great news is that first time director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, make your guides human, likable and well rounded, so although it sometimes looks like a game, the experience of watching Zombieland thankfully never feels like playing one.

So what does it feel like? Well, much like an old Eighties character centred comedy of the type that’s recently undergone a minor revival, attributable to the children of that decade – Judd Apatow and friends, finally being old enough to make their own movies. It’s the like the nineties never happened. No great pain there you might think. Sure, there’s the odd and often sweet humanising scene in which characters explore their own reaction to their situation but the bulk of Zombieland is witty, movie literate silliness, reaching magnificent heights with Bill Murray’s cameo – possibly one of the best ever, which almost steals the movie. “6 people left alive and one of them is Bill Fucking Murray!” exclaims Harrelson and his enthusiasm is, along with the zombies, infectious. You won’t read any further details of Murray’s contribution here but if you don’t adore every second of it then you don’t really deserve a pair of eyes.

This is a movie with a pleasing and affectionate referential streak so in addition to Tallahassee’s quest for a twinkie, recalling a certain supernatural comedy which is later featured, Van Halen appears on the soundtrack only for his real world fate to be revealed when the characters reach Los Angeles. Fleischer knows his audience and he plays up to them in a manor that’ll put a smile on the face of anyone of a certain age.

Pitched as a survival guide through an inconsequential world, Zombieland is a melee of head crunching, shot gun blasting mayhem with a good old fashioned road movie crow barred in-between. The girls don’t make much of an impact, beyond acting as a device to get the men to the Pacific Playland Amusement Park climax, well they’ll need someone to rescue won’t they, but the banter between Harrelson’s no nonsense badass and Eisenberg’s gangly oddball is hugely enjoyable and both flex their considerable comic muscles.

Funny, likable and perfectly pitched between road trip voyage of discovery and mild horror, Zombieland is knowing without ever being a smug postmodern jaunt and consequently it’s a movie in its own right, rather than a distended spoof of genre movies, like Shaun of the Dead. “Until next time” promises Columbus at the end, and thanks to some sharp lines and just the right amount of Zombie murder, that’s a promise you’ll hope the filmmakers keep in the not too distant future.

Rating:  

Tags: Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, review, Ruben Fleischer, Woody Harrelson, Zombieland