by Everett Jensen

Created on: January 03, 2010

Zombieland (2009)
directed by Ruben Fleischer
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray, Amber Heard, Derek Graf

For a film attempting to squeeze new blood and gore out of such longstanding tradition, Zombieland manages to be both clever and genuine but not particularly innovative or novel.  It maintains a nonchalant, almost lazy approach to zombification and is really nothing more than a protracted romantic comedy/road film that happens to use zombies as a recurring motif.

Woody Harrelson gets to strut about like he’s the cock of the walk in this film.  As Tallahassee (all of the main characters are named after cities) he is tough, smart, and looks like he’s ready to tear the head off of a bull.  Indeed, Tallahassee is arguably the coolest zombie fighter the genre has ever seen.  He’s a cowboy with an eagle eye and he’s definitely the type of guy you need on your side if you are going to survive an apocalypse of this magnitude.  But he’s much more than that.  He’s also vulnerable and deeply wounded by a personal tragedy greater than he could possibly articulate.  The reveal of this information transforms  Tallahassee from an almost superhero type to a caring, loving human being.

Indeed, these characters come across as genuine and fleshed out throughout the film.  Columbus (Eisenberg) is a geeky virgin who is initially trying to get back home to Columbus, OH.  He’s the classic, if cliched, hump-hungry adolescent who is desperate to shed his virgin status and finds his target in the form of Wichita (Stone) a con artist who manages to steal the boys’s vehicle and guns as they enter the back area of a grocery  store where Wichita’s sister Little Rock (Breslin) is pretending to have been bitten by a zombie.  

The sisters are heading to an amusement park in California called “Pacific Playland” where they are convinced there are no zombies.  Along the way the group drives through all the palatial homes of celebrities and Tallahassee decides to drive them to the home of the biggest one of them all.  Once inside it becomes apparent due to visual cues that include a Andy Warhol mock up that this amazing house belongs to none other than Bill Murray.  Tallahassee is obsessed with Murray and exults like a school girl when Murray stumbles out of his room in full

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