Horror Week: Zombieland

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Horror Week: Zombieland

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Written by April Yorke

Friday, 30 October 2009 00:00

People tend to think of the movies the way they experience them: as a narrative with a beginning, middle, and an end. The production of the movie, however, is completely disjointed: scenes are shot out of order, depending on factors like location, availability of actors, and natural light, and put together as a narrative in the editing room. Also, the writer(s) may not have initially conceived of the story in the narrative order that the audience experiences. Sometimes a great line, scene, or even ending come first, and the rest of the story is just filler to get you there. Zombieland is one of those movies.

Light on plot and heavy on narration in the early going, Zombieland finds Jesse Eisenberg working his way across the U.S. in search of his parents after a zombie pandemic strikes (in this case, mad cow becomes mad human). He crosses paths another survivor (Woody Harrelson) who has a gift for zombie killing and an insatiable yearning for Twinkies. The unlikely duo (nerdy college student and burly tough guy) decide to stick together.

Eventually they meet up with two resourceful sisters, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, hiding out in an abandoned grocery store. How the foursome go from there to the amusement park that makes up the film's climax is all the movie has in the way of plot, so we'll leave the recap there. It's clear by that point in the movie that co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick thought of that act first ("Zombies in an amusement park! Awesome, dude!") and came up with the rest of the markedly thin plot later.

But when the ending is a set piece so rife with possibilities (Roller coaster zombies! Water park zombies! Pirate ship zombies! ), can you really blame the filmmakers for starting there?

Though the narration is oppressive early in the film -- when Eisenberg is the only character on screen --, it's more bearable after the other characters show up. While Eisenberg's performance consists largely of his best Michael Cera impersonation, Harrelson makes a delightfully badass roughneck, and the movie derives a surprising amount of mileage from his ingenious killing techniques. By the time the movie gets to a fantastic cameo that won't be spoiled here if you don't know about it already, you will be thoroughly under its thrall.

It's not the performances, however, that make the movie so good; it's the off-beat "rules" Eisenberg's invented for survival and particularly the movie's illustration of said rules: A business woman shoots a zombie in the stomach, then turns back to check confirm that he's down for the count. Leg biting ensues. Rule #3: The Double Tap. A soccer mom speeds off in her minivan from her daughter's birthday party after all the attendees turn into zombies only to go flying through the windshield in a collision. Rule # 4: Seatbelts.

First time feature director Ruben Fleischer owes a debt to Shaun of the Dead (which he sort of acknowledges), but, whereas Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg trafficked in parody and used it to integrate a subtle message about the deadening effect of aimlessness in one's 20s, Fleischer skirts parody entirely. Despite the imaginative opening credits sequence featuring various slow motion zombie attacks and zombie kills, Fleisher, Reese, and Wernick aim squarely for comedy first and horror second.

The movie is never as scary as it is gory (in a fun way), and the direction is a touch more assured and inventive than you'd expect from a first time director. Though the amusement park doesn't stand out as an instant classic set piece the way it was surely meant to do, Zombieland is a winsome, welcome addition to the burgeoning hor-com subgenre.

Zombieland opened in Canada and the U.S. on October 2, 2009 and is hopefully still playing at a theatre near you.