ZOMBIELAND

I will admit, initially, I was very sceptical. It looked like a cheap Shaun of the Dead knock-off or something and despite my love of all things zombie (Zombie Flesh Eaters on mute is the business!), I don’t think I have time to sit through another attempt to recapture the gold that is Shaun of the Dead.

What made Shaun so great was its mix of humour and genuine horror. It had generous amounts of gore, laughs and appreciation for the genre and making things at times heartbreaking creates what I always considered to be as sincere and realistic a zombie film as you’ll ever get. It’d be unfair to compare Shaun with Zombieland since Shaun is actually vastly superior. That isn’t to say I hated Zombieland, on the contrary, its pretty damn good.

Set an unspecified amount of time after the zombie apocalypse and the few remaining survivors are wandering around trying to stay alive, this is where we meet Columbus, a young nerdlinger who has managed to avoid zombification due to his set of survival rules. Eventually he meets up with Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee, a weapon swinging zombie-killing machine who takes great delight in despatching the undead as imaginatively as possible. The pair head off together, briefly discussing rumours of a zombie free, promise land, picking up Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin along the way and there folk lies yours plot. The thing that needs to be made clear about Zombieland is that this is strictly a comedy first and horror film as a second thought. Sure you have a reasonable helping of gore and one or two jumps in the opening act but we’re mainly playing for laughs here. In fact for a lot of the middle section, the zombies are almost non-existent.

This is kind of where the movies falls down. When we hit the mid-point of the movie it seems to grid to a complete halt. The characters are fun comic roles and while I did find there blossoming relationship between the two main characters to be quite sweet I think that, unlike in Shaun of the Dead, the pacing is shot as soon as the zombie threat dies down and I don't want to say that it is the characters inability to hold onto the movie beyond the zombies, they are all genuinally likeable. Its kind of like it just ran out of things to do until some young upstart writer came bounding in with five pages of script he spent all night writing with the mother of all cameos contained therein and man, is it a fun cameo. If you haven’t heard who it is yet then guard your ears! It worth not knowing cause it really is very cool when it does happen and also manages to kick-start the movie into its terribly fun second half.

Woody Harrelson, it must be pointed out, is superb. The guy NEEDS more roles like this! The delight he takes in killing zombies is (pun-o-mania) infectious. Though he doesn’t reach the loveable and perfectly realised heights of Nick Frost in Shaun, Woody, when he is good, is a joy to watch. Otherwise everyone does a fine job, Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is a hugely likeable lead, a role Michael Cera should take a look at as an example of playing awkward teen/twenty-something without the audience wanting to punch him in the chest.

At the end of it all Zombieland is just great fun, its not going to set any new rules for the zombie genre nor break any ground but its waaaaay better than I expected and I really had a great time at it. It’s a perfect Saturday night movie, its not too horrifying nor too bleak that it’ll ruin your evening. It’s the kind of movie you leave with a big old smile and a good time had by all. Also I must mention the opening credits, they are absolutely awesome!

Shaun of the Dead still did it better though.

- Pahl Disasterfield