Zombieland

Not all movies need a message or a metaphor. Take Zombieland as an example, the closest thing to a moral agenda this film has is “fucking shit up is fun”. That isn’t to say this film is dumb, the humour comes entirely from wit, mainly Jesse Eisenbergs protagonist, who dryly narrates the film with the tentative, nerdy ironies Michael Cera is known for. Eisenberg>Cera anyday in my book though, he lacks the quite so cute babyface that confines him to quirky rom-coms. As proven in the Social Network Jesse can turn to drama easily and that, coupled with the way he can convincingly pull off a somewhat flawed, dickish character helps flesh this film out.

Talking about flesh, I’m going to stop and point out that this film is gory. These aren’t the Shaun of the Dead, green faced mumbling stumbler zombies; these are the Rage infected, bodily fluids and bone snapping monsters. For gore fans though there is an excellent slow motion zombie murder montage to Metallica to look forward to.

Accompanying our geeky antihero is Woody Harrelson, who fulfils the role of badass in chief with ease. He enjoys killing zombies and is effortlessly hardcore (“cool” is not a word reserved for a snake skin jacket wearing red neck, but he sure is fun) and dismembers the undead with baseball bats, garden shears and banjos. Later the film introduces Emma Stone (ummmm Emma Stone . . . ) and her spunky 12 year old sister. They are they street wise con women who fool the duo but soon end up in with them. Beneath these characterures however each character has atleast one thing behind them and the cast turn out to be surprisingly deep. Some of the revelations about their past are truly tragic, although it isn’t too long until something funny comes along.

This film won’t make you question existence or admire life in a different way, but it sure will entertain you for the entirety of it’s running time and is one of the funniest comedies so far this decade.