by Jamie Clubb

Created on: July 19, 2010

Plot:

Two months after a mutated form of mad cow disease has turned a good deal of the world's population into predatory zombies, hungry for human flesh, a young former internet geek (Jesse Eisenberg) fights for survival following his own list of rules. Matters get more complicated when he teams up with the wild zombie-killing loner known as Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). On Tallahassee's orders the geek goes by the name of Columbus, the place he is heading to. Both their lives get more complicated when they meet the streetwise Witchita (Emma Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin)...

Review:

"Zombieland" marks US's highest profile entry into zombie comedy territory since the UK's "Shaun of the Dead" kicked the subgenre off again. Of course, one might argue that zombie comedy or zom-coms have been around in some form of another since the mindless reanimated undead first stumbled into celluloid. Wikipedia has 1941's "King of the Zombies" as the earliest example of the genre. However, this film just seems to be a zombie film with some comedy relief. 1945's "Zombies on Broadway" is perhaps a better example, but it hardly sparked off a subgenre. The first truly classic and archetypical example of the genre was 1985's "The Return of the Living Dead". Before that John Landis had provided something of a prototype of the decaying and gory version of the comedy zombie in "American Werewolf in London", but this was a sub-plot at best.

For me, one of the best zombie comedies ever produced was Peter Jackson's "Braindead". This film was clearly ahead of its time in that he juxtaposed light suburban comedy drama with over the top splatter horror. "Shaun of the Dead" refined this concept in a move that has seen an increasing number of inspired features from Canada's "Fido" to Newzealand's "Black Sheep". The formula has been loosely established. Take a genre far removed from zombie territory and put zombies in there. The genesis of the zombies is often of little importance and, in fact, many of these films don't make reference to it whatsoever. The emphasis is on humans trying to live normal lives despite the extraordinary threat of zombies. Both "Braindead" and "Fido", for example, set their films in an idyllic 1950s style suburban world to emphasise this contrast. Like "Shaun of the Dead", the influence is clearly George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". "Zombieland" differs from others in this current genre by setting everything in a post-apocalyptic

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