Zombies are the new vampires

Film review: Zombieland

MANILA, Philippines - Zombies are this year’s vampires! Forget New Moon and all those neurotic vampires; if you’re out to be hip and up to date, it’s zombies that are the current rage, putting vampires back in the closets and coffins from where they came. Literary masterpieces have been spoofed in zombie-fashion, conceits like books called World War Z are the rage, and it wasn’t going to take long for Hollywood to take stock of the situation. Thankfully, a film like Zombieland puts it all in perspective, giving us a barrel load of tongue-in-cheek irreverence, mayhem, and copious amounts of zombie-gore. Directed with chutzpah and undisguised maniacal glee by Ruben Fleischer, Zombieland is a refreshing “shaggy dog” film, that succeeds by not taking itself seriously.

Starting off as a primer on what to do when you encounter a zombie, our heroes are two survivors of the zombie plague that has overrun the US. Our narrator is Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a genuine nerd, who teams up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a gun-toting, original badass, zombie-killer, who comes replete with snake-skin jacket and an arsenal of zombie-exterminating weapons. They find their foil in two sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) — the in-joke being that as you can’t trust anyone or need to make friends, you don’t tell them your real name and just mention where you’re headed for or come from. The interplay between the two men on one side, and the grifter, double-crossing girls are worth the price of admission.

It’s in the attitude that the film shines. The cultural references are spot on — Ghostbusters, Titanic, Anaconda — just wait for when these films get mentioned, and laugh your heads off. In this film, Bill Murray is the epitome of Hollywood, and the cameo he plays in this film is priceless. There’s Tallahassee treating a Twinkie like the Holy Grail, a gang-busting final 30 minutes in an amusement park, and throughout the film, the undisguised glee in being flat-out bloody gross, and piling up the corpses and exacting wanton destruction.

It’s a sly film that had me, in turns, chuckling to myself, and outright falling off my seat. That virginity could still be a major concern tucked in all the mayhem was hilarious, as was the over-the-top manner in which Harrelson portrayed Tallahassee. So if you’re looking for a film that’s extremely funny, gross to the max, and yet smartly rendered, Zombieland is the ticket.