Does exactly what it says on the tin. The days of rich back stories, believable narrative development or any real point are thankfully behind us and we can enjoy film in the way that god intended, with little to no thought and lots of often unnecessary but never unwelcome violence.

For those of you who don’t know and don’t feel like guessing Zombieland is the tale of a young man, up-and-comer Jessie Eisenberg of Adventureland, trying to find his way in a world overrun by zombies. Along the way he meets and eventually teams up with a pair of sisters on their way to an amusement park, Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine and Emma Stone who you will probably know as the hot chick from Superbad, as well as a zombie killing machine by the name of Tallahassee, Woody Harrelson.

The first thing that really sticks out to me in this film is the visual style, I mean, the film looks great. Most notably the text that appears throughout the film which reacts to the action on the screen. This is used to greatest effect during the opening sequence where the titles are knocked away by flaming zombies or swinging crowbars. This little touch brings a lot of humour as well as upping the cool factor which is one of the few things that this film relies on to keep you engaged. The use of slow motion is a definite plus, usually this kind of thing comes off as cheesy and unnecessary which is the case in Zombieland but this just serves to add to the films charm, who doesn’t like to see skulls bursting on pavements in slow motion?

Story wise this film is a little, lets say, light. There isn’t really very much that goes on during the film, with travelling being the only thing that really actually happens. The whole reasoning behind the zombiepocalypse is brought up for seconds and then pushed aside as big words can sometimes hurt the brain and even the traditional ‘lets travel to the zombie-free haven up north’ storyline which is present is many films like this is only really mentioned in passing with the major focus being on the constant zombie attacks with more and more gruesome ends. Now this may have come across as a big negative point, and as a man who’s main passion in life is the construction of story I would usually class it as such but Zombieland really excels in making you not care very much about what lies beyond tomorrow for the characters and really has you enjoying the banter between them and the damage that they deal the undead.

Acting wise this film is solid. With such a small cast it is very important that we care what the characters are going through and especially with a film like this it is even more important that the actors can keep us interested during the scenes that don’t involve decapitation. Jessie Eisenberg does an amazing job as Columbus, he portrays the perfect nerdy, socially inept guy that is in over his head whilst also charming us with his kooky ways. He is responsible for a lot of the comedy and somehow manages to make shooting a man in the face with a shotgun look kinda cute. Woody Harrelson really steals the show in my opinion with his portrayal of Tallahassee, his simplicity mixed with an undertone of sadness, his sense of innocence coupled with his exceptional skill at undead-killing mix together to make the kind of character that will be remembered long after the credits roll and the popcorn is picked out of your teeth. Abigail Breslin does a satisfactory job as Little Rock, through no fault of her own she was pushed into the background while the other more interesting characters stood at stage front though her performance was very natural and believable especially for someone of her age. Lastly Emma Stone, oooh Emma Stone. I knew she would be back and damn did she come back in style. She looked great, we all know it but her portrayal of Wichita was actually pretty damn good. Its clear to see that she is more than just a pretty face and it was refreshing to see her play more of a leading role as well as a bad-girl role in direct contrast to her character in Superbad.

The only real problem that I had with the film was the pacing, especially towards the end of the second act. As I explained earlier the plot in this film is pretty inconsequential and for the most part this isn’t really a problem but during a fairly lengthy section with no zombie encounters you start to realise that not much is going on and you start to question what this film is even really about. The characters are for the most part aimless and are quite a bit less interesting when not covered in guts but a bit of character development from Woody Harrelson and a cameo from a living legend who I will not name start to bring the interest back in and then we are dragged back into a gorefest of epic proportions and all of the problems just float away again.

RATING
4 severed heads out of 5

Come again next week for a review of whatever is out at that time!

kesley@itsnotatumour.com

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Tags: Abigail Breslin, Adventureland, Emma Stone, Jessie Eisenberg, Review, Undead, violence, Woody Harrelson, Zombies

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.