Movie: Zombieland

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Family vacation, children not included

By Davin Arul

Zombie movies: bleak, depressing analogies of our obsessive consumer society? Fun ways to watch grievous bodily harm inflicted on, er, bodies without the guilt since they’re just reanimated corpses anyway? Interesting case studies of how intestines would spill out of gaping rents in our abdomens?

Or little slices of how humanity would behave/react when all its rules, sense of order, wishes and fancies, concepts of decorum and social mores go swirling down the toilet?

All of the above, most of the time, but thanks to efforts like the brilliant Shaun of the Dead and now this little gem, zombie movies can be cheery, funny with a poker face, and optimistic too.

Zombieland is that rare horror-comedy whose two halves never overwhelm one another.

It’s neither too gruesome nor too scatter-brained, and most of the attempts at humour actually work well in the context of the film’s nightmare setting; the best of these funny moments having to do with Bill Murray’s appearance in the film.

Yet somewhere amidst all the blood, entrails and chuckles, Zombieland also has a heart – poignant moments such as the truth about a character’s lost puppy and the epiphany in the finale experienced by another character are testament to this.

It’s not a pretty film by any means, though. Like the title implies, everything has gone to hell in a laundry basket (much bigger than a handbasket, you must admit), though the zombie apocalypse in this case is the result of mad cow disease spreading through the population like wildfire.

The end result is the same: like the undead in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, the flesh-eaters of Zombieland are fleet-footed sprinters, all intent on filling their bellies with warm meat and spare parts.

Wandering this wasteland are folks like Columbus (Eisenberg), a college kid trying to get home to see if his parents survived; Tallahassee (Harrelson), a redneck just travelling around engaging in the zombie-ass-kicking business (and business is goooood); and Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin), two sisters out scamming their way to survive.

No real names are shared by these survivors, because it wouldn’t do to get too familiar with someone who could be roadkill in the next five minutes.

Well, it’s good that we’re allowed to get familiar with them because this is a winning quartet of characters, a bunch you can genuinely get to like, warts and all. Zombieland is a story about taking time to savour the little things in life (like the Zen story about a man hanging from a fraying vine, a tiger above and jagged rocks below, plucking and eating a berry growing from the vine and savouring its sweetness) and making the best out of the worst possible situation.

There’s a bit of a slow spot in the middle, but it’s all nicely compensated for with the crazy rescue mission in an amusement park that makes up the movie’s finale.

A sequel is apparently in the works, but I for one would prefer to let things end on the open but optimistic note that they do here. For a zombie fan, you can’t find many better places to hang than Zombieland.

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