09/25/09 - Zombieland

Zombieland (2009, 80 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1156398/

I was able to see a premiere of Zombieland here and it was amazing. Not only did I get to see this film but I also was able to witness a Q&A session afterward featuring stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and director Ruben Fleischer.

The movie is quite simple, really. It's the survival story of a group that happens to meet up while attempting to survive a zombie outbreak. In a unique naming convention, we only know the main people as where they are from, not their real names. The star is Jesse Eisenberg who hails Columbus and he also provides voice overs throughout the film. His "friends" are Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Bill Murray has a hilarious cameo as himself.

The acting here seems to be mostly improv and the actors work with this to great success. In my opinion, the funniest lines delivered were quick one-liners that were probably ad-libbed. The movie is filled with these quick quips and they are an endless supply of humor. For instance, when Columbus is introducing Little Rock to Bill Murray via his movies, he puts Ghostbusters in and simply says "Now you're gonna know who they call." Simple lines like this make the movie great and I give complete credit for this to this great cast. Jesse Eisenberg seems to act far beyond his years in my opinion, both in this and in Adventureland. Harrelson is equally perfect in his role. However, the actor that steals every scene he's in is Bill Murray. He's absolutely hysterical and his cameo was one of the best in recent memory.

A recurring motif of the film were Columbus's Zombie Rules. The main ones are introduced at the beginning of the film with quick cuts of them being employed. For instance, Rule #1 is Cardio and we see this demonstrated with a zombie outrunning a fat lady. The Rules are great because they pop up again and again in the film but not too much. They're perfectly done in this regard. They also almost always serve as some sort of joke when they come up on screen and usually this joke is a good one. I liked this overarching touch quite a bit.

The movie also employs slow-mo a lot. The opening credits are a bunch of slow-mo scenes set to Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and this is great. It's very similar to the opening credits scene for Watchmen though not as awesome. It still works though. The slow-mo throughout the film is akin to its use in 300. It's done just for show and nothing more. It makes the film scenes that are really cool even cooler. To stretch this out even more, Zombieland as a whole really just seems like a movie that just throws together everything that people wanted in a zombie movie that hadn't already been in a zombie movie. We get cheesy one-liners, over-the-top blood, slow-mo and brutal killing blows, and a great cast. It's nonstop laughs throughout the whole thing except for quite a few moments of drama. However, the drama is there in such a way that it doesn't try and take away from the movie or make the movie into something it's not. It adds to the characters and expands the story while also letting the viewer take a break from the laughing they've been doing. It's very well-crafted in my opinion.

Overall, I gave this film an 8/10. Some of my only complaints for the film is that it's a little short (somewhere around 80 minutes) and that some of the drama points could have maybe been expanded on further. Though overall, everything works out very well and it's a thrill ride adventure set in a zombie apocalypse. It's not a film to miss if you love this genre.

[Note: Due to a voting update, I have changed the rating of Zombieland to a 07/10.]