10 December 2009
Some films should not be made and Zombieland, which is as bad as its title suggests, is one of them. A zombie virus infects all but a few persons, four of whom unintentionally come together, drive across country deflecting zombies at every stop, until they reach California and an amusement park, where they aide one another in killing off a whole lot of zombies, which consummates their mutual trust and their bond as a ‘family’. And that is it, end of story.
Director Ruben Fleischer, with snarling extras in garishly amateurish make-up, brings brutal disdain for people and property to a new low. He relentlessly tosses in parodies, accented by drop-down titles to make sure we do not miss them. Granted, Fleischer tries to stretch a story that can be told in one-line into a feature film, however the result is as dismembered as the various ghoulish scenes he flashes on the screen at us.
Labeled a comedy, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s forced screenplay tells the story through the young nerdy guy Jesse Eisenberg (Columbus), with lots of moral embellishing… oh please. The talents of Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson (Tallahassee), Emma Stone (Wichita), Abigail Breslin (Little Rock) and Bill Murray, as himself and offering the only unadulterated comic moments, are wasted in a film like this; was it contractual or a need of money that ensconced them in this project? Seems this film is a big hit in the U.S. Hmm… to coin the movie’s tagline, this film is so dead.