Zombieland
Directed by Ruben Fleisher (2009)
It has been a couple of weeks since I saw this, but what the hell, I’ll review it anyway.
I was all prepared to be underwhelmed by this movie: Shaun of the Dead style ‘zom-com’ with a gung-ho attitude that is the staple of such films from the other side of the Atlantic, and directed by the man who directed … err … well … not a lot. But hey, I’ve got a lot of time for Woody Harrelson — even if when he’s just riffing on Natural Born Killer Mickey Knox — and the trailers looked entertaining, if nothing else.
So it’s with an almost-uneasy dollop of surprise that I say I really enjoyed Zombieland. Yes, it’s a bit silly, but it’s clearly supposed to be, and everyone from Harrelson to (Little Miss Sunshine’s) Abigail Breslin seems to be having a riot. The direction is confident, and while it’s pretty forumulaic, it’s certainly got enough interesting ideas to keep the viewer from worrying about it.
Set in the near future, with most of the human race wiped out by a (near) deadly disease (allegedly the only ‘zombie’ film Fleisher had seen before making Zombieland is Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later), it’s more of a buddy/road movie than any kind of horror/zombie film. Unlike Edgar Wright, it’s clear Fleisher doesn’t understand horror, or how to build tension and genuinely scare the audience, so it falls a bit flat when trying to do that, but it succeeds elsewhere in a way that I found rather charming. Devices such as Jesse Eisenberg’s rules for surviving Zombieland breaking the fourth wall and being cast into in the middle of scenes in giant letters come across as fun and charmingly over the top rather than irritating and intrusive. Which is no mean feat.
It’s not going to go down as a classic, but it’s a fun ride, and Bill Murray steals the show in a single line when asked if he has any regrets. I won’t spoil it.
