REVIEW: Zombieland
[This is our second review of Zombieland. The first of which can be found here.]
Here is what I thought of Zombieland.
I finally saw Zombieland despite not going to an advanced screening, but rather seeing it during the Red Carpet premiere in Chicago. I could go on about how the premiere was but instead I have to talk about Zombieland because it is one of the best zombie parody movies sense Shaun of the Dead. In fact, I am willing to say that this isn’t really a horror movie at all… even though there are some scares. The movie is about a kid who survives because he has a list of zombie survival tips. He meets this southern zombie killer extraordinaire and they pair up… even after being taken hostage by a 12-year-old and here older sister. The movie then just goes in all directions after that.
Let me start off with the few things that really worked with this movie; first, the camerawork was very well done. In the beginning during the montage over the credits they showed zombies attacking people in slow motion… something that I always wanted to see and they used it very well. There were several low angle shots of people that gave this movie that extra epic feel to it and I don’t know what to classify this movie as other than a comedy but maybe an epic comedy. When the end came at the carnival that were great P.O.V. shots of Harrilson gunning down zombies on a roller coaster, which was just pure amazement, and the director really wasn’t afraid to put the camera right in the action.
I am not going to talk too much about the acting because there isn’t anything to say about it… the only thing that bugs me a little is that Eisenberg acts a lot like Cera and it’s really annoying at times. Although, if Cera was in this movie it would be way more laughable than it was and it would have distracted from the main plot. The one thing that I really enjoyed was to see Abigail Breslin in a zombie flick… of course she did Signs but to see her lift a gun and shoot the hell out of zombies was fun to see on the big screen.
I had no real complains about the zombies because by this point I am already used to seeing running zombies… I will, however, talk about the humor in this movie. The humor was extremely fresh in this movie and it proves to others that there are still some original zombie gags out that that have not been touched. I cannot say that the humor overwhelmed me from the actual story because that’s what it’s supposed to do… it was supposed to overshadow the movie but I kind of wish that it didn’t. There were some jump-out scares but the humor came from the brilliant dialogue… the little things in zombie movies and the overall plot of the movie.
I really enjoyed this movie and I can’t really find anything that I did not like from it… maybe the fact that the humor was a bit excessive but that I could have been a lot worse. The characters were likable, the movie had a lot of good post-apocalyptic scenery, the makeup was crisp and the way things played out was easy to keep track of. This movie looks at zombie flicks and pretty much parodies everything about the genre… it’s as if Shoot ‘em Up teamed up with Dawn of the Dead for an all out explosion of guts and silliness. It truly is one of the best zombie comedies since Shaun of the Dead.Â
