The Movie Review: Zombieland

Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland is one of the best, funniest movies in a long time. With a brilliant cast, perfectly crafted screenplay, and inventive direction Zombieland is a truly fun and memorable movie-going experience.

Our hero on our journey through Zombieland is Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg, fresh from Adventureland, in another brilliantly nuanced, if slightly familiar, performance) one of the last surviving humans after most of the world has been taken over by blood-thirsty, flesh-eating zombies. He has a firm set of rules that he sticks to (cardio, seat belts, not being a hero) which has made him survive longer than most. Columbus is trying to get back home to where his maybe-still-human family may be. Along the way he meets Tallahasse (Woody Harrelson) who, like Columbus, is just trying to stay alive and human as long as he can, and find a Twinkie along the way, if possible. They find two more travelers in Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, respectivley) two sisters who are trying to get to Pacific Playland, an amusement park just outside of Los Angeles.

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Zombieland just may be the perfect comedy/horror film. It has an amazing balance of hilarity and terror that separates it from other films in this genre. Really one of the most brilliant things about the film is the screenplay. Written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick the movie does the difficult task of creating a situation where an audience member will wonder about what they would do, how they would act in a situation like this. Not only does the movie capture the way that people would carry on, and the things people would do if there was no more worry about the law, but it does it in an intelligent and extremely funny way. Reese and Wernick brilliantly walk the line of showing some outrageous moments, while still making the movie not conform to typical zombie movie cliches and they infect in the audience a feeling of fantasy that there are limitless possibilities.

The cast doesn't exactly break any new ground, each of them sticking to familiar territory; Harrelson is the funny-tough guy, Eisenberg the awkward virgin, Breslin the little girl full of life, and Emma Stone the sarcastic irresistible one. However these particular actors are the best at playing their respective types, and so it is never annoying, or unoriginal. Each performer has a real knack for taking the dialogue and making the most out of it, making it their own.

For anybody that read my review of this year's Orphan (available here), you will know that I have been losing my faith in the horror genre for a long time. Zombieland is so good that it has instilled in me the hope that horror is still alive, it is still possible and can still be inventively done. While by no means a great movie, or a movie that is going to go down in history as being particularly exceptional, this is a movie that is capable of making an audience member have a good time; it accomplishes the difficult task of making a viewer feel like a kid again. I have not had a better time at the movies this year.

Zombieland is in theaters now, you should really go see it!