Movie Review - Zombieland

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While Hollywood has been combing [combining?] horror and comedy for decades, the first truly great film that the genre produced was Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.  The movie worked for a very simple reason: the “horror” was real.  Unlike many horror-comedies (even great ones like Young Frankenstein), the film always took its monsters seriously.  Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolfman and/or Dracula didn’t get one laugh in the film.  That was left to Abbott and Costello.  Our heroes were placed in an actual scary situation but instead of being our conduit for terror, they were our instrument for laughter.  The monsters themselves were never played for laughs.  This lesson was long forgotten until the recent Shaun of the Dead.  And it’s a lesson that the new movie Zombieland has obviously learned. 

The movie stars Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, a grizzled zombie killing veteran, and Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, a phobia-riddled college kid who has managed to turn his neurosis to his advantage.  The film is set in a world where zombies roam the countryside scavenging for the last remaining uninfected humans.  Columbus has a detailed list of rules (32 to be exact) that aid him in surviving.  (Rule #1: Cardio, Rule #2: Beware of Bathrooms, etc.)  Tallahassee and Columbus are strangers who happen across each other as they are headed in the same direction.  The two have formed a tenuous alliance when the meet-up with Wichita (Emma Stone) and her 12-year old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).  They have all taken the names of cities in an effort to avoid the bonding that might occur if they knew each other’s real names.

I recently complained about how Surrogates created this huge world to play in then never did.  Zombieland is the anti-Surrogates.  It is a funny, dark, funny, action-packed, funny, violent, funny horror movie…it also happens to be funny.  It’s not aiming for high-art.  It wants to be one thing and one thing only – a laugh out loud, kick-ass zombie movie.  And, as such, it’s a perfect thing.  Everything about this film works: the zombies, the action, the performances, the humor…everything.  Even the on-screen credits (which continue throughout the movie) are awesome. 

This is a good ol’ fashion, big-budget, Hollywood style, action-comedy thrill ride.  Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg have done for killing zombies what Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd did for busting ghosts.

Rule #32 is "Enjoy the little things."

Rule #33?  Go see Zombieland.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Shaun of the Dead and 1 being Zombies on Broadway, Zombieland gets a 10.

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