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It's been said that zombie films are about the inevitability of death; the undead are slow, relentless, and their triumph is inevitable. It's only a matter of time before you're surrounded. Zombieland, as the title alone indicates, is a notable exception to this idea. It's about the mutated ways that people maintain their humanity through even the most bizarre and horrific situations.
Zombieland is full of characters whose quirks and personal foibles are tailor-made for their post-apocalytic landscape. They refer to one another by their places of origin (or destination), presumably for the same reason a farmer's children aren't allowed to name the chickens: best not to get too attached. They are, from North to South: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson).
Eisenberg's Columbus is our guide and narrator throughout the film, and he ignores the fourth wall to list the general rules of survival he's used to keep breathing. Some of them are amusing ("Rule #3: Beware of Bathrooms"), and others have spurred from the oversights in other horror films that cause us to yell at the screen ("Rule #31: Check the Back Seat"). Most of these rules are shown as floating words on-screen and react to the events around them in a manner reminiscent of 2006's Stranger Than Fiction.
Columbus is our tether to the world therein; rational, cautious, and trying to survive at all costs. But if Columbus is our ego, Harrelson's Tallahassee is undoubtedly our id. He delights in killing zombies in increasingly brutal and amusing ways, drives around in the largest vehicles he can find, and carries enough weaponry to arm a platoon. His skillset and temperament have gone from social liabilities to survival assets, and he struts around the wreckage of humanity as the self-declared king of its remnants.
I will not spoil the circumstances under which the four characters come to find each other, or the identity of the fifth that they meet along the way (which is the film's best gag). It will suffice to say that Zombieland is to zombie films what Scream is to slashers; it's a film that stands outside of its genre, knows its conventions, and knows that you know them, too. It's aware of the expectations we bring to any zombie film, and readily exploits them.
After a bit of time together, we know the film's characters must open up to each other, and they all must get to wherever it is they're going. Thankfully, Zombieland largely refrains from trying to create flimsy drama with token back stories; it has a heart, but it'd much rather splatter it on the screen than lay it bare. The result is focused and restrained and runs a lean 88 minutes. It's all fun and firepower, and no fluff.
The central ingenuity in Zombieland is to reduce killing the undead to the level of a chore. This is not a movie about the downfall of society, or watching people cope with sudden disaster. This is what happens after the carnage and heartache, when everyone's gotten over it and has to live in the new world, day-in and day-out. People stay the same, even when there aren't very many of them left.
Zombieland is full of characters whose quirks and personal foibles are tailor-made for their post-apocalytic landscape. They refer to one another by their places of origin (or destination), presumably for the same reason a farmer's children aren't allowed to name the chickens: best not to get too attached. They are, from North to South: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson).
Eisenberg's Columbus is our guide and narrator throughout the film, and he ignores the fourth wall to list the general rules of survival he's used to keep breathing. Some of them are amusing ("Rule #3: Beware of Bathrooms"), and others have spurred from the oversights in other horror films that cause us to yell at the screen ("Rule #31: Check the Back Seat"). Most of these rules are shown as floating words on-screen and react to the events around them in a manner reminiscent of 2006's Stranger Than Fiction.
Columbus is our tether to the world therein; rational, cautious, and trying to survive at all costs. But if Columbus is our ego, Harrelson's Tallahassee is undoubtedly our id. He delights in killing zombies in increasingly brutal and amusing ways, drives around in the largest vehicles he can find, and carries enough weaponry to arm a platoon. His skillset and temperament have gone from social liabilities to survival assets, and he struts around the wreckage of humanity as the self-declared king of its remnants.
I will not spoil the circumstances under which the four characters come to find each other, or the identity of the fifth that they meet along the way (which is the film's best gag). It will suffice to say that Zombieland is to zombie films what Scream is to slashers; it's a film that stands outside of its genre, knows its conventions, and knows that you know them, too. It's aware of the expectations we bring to any zombie film, and readily exploits them.
After a bit of time together, we know the film's characters must open up to each other, and they all must get to wherever it is they're going. Thankfully, Zombieland largely refrains from trying to create flimsy drama with token back stories; it has a heart, but it'd much rather splatter it on the screen than lay it bare. The result is focused and restrained and runs a lean 88 minutes. It's all fun and firepower, and no fluff.
The central ingenuity in Zombieland is to reduce killing the undead to the level of a chore. This is not a movie about the downfall of society, or watching people cope with sudden disaster. This is what happens after the carnage and heartache, when everyone's gotten over it and has to live in the new world, day-in and day-out. People stay the same, even when there aren't very many of them left.