REVIEW: Zombieland

My cuzin Molly is awesome and works for G-Mart Comic Books (Logan Square), a job which occasionally gets her free promotional items, including movie tickets. And though she is intensely squeamish when it comes to horror – specifically, zombie – related things, she knows I’m a huge fan, so I was able to luck out with an invite from her on an “admit two” advance screening ticket to a sneak preview of “Zombieland” in Chicago earlier tonight – in fact, I just got home from seeing it! (And grocery shopping for meat! Zombies movies make me hungry.)

I’m going to go out of my way to make this as spoiler free as possible with glossing over key details. WARNING: I make no promises that I’m not going to geek out over any scenes to the point where a few slip past, and I do apologize for that.

To start with, while this is clearly a zombie movie, it can also be thought of as an action-comedy that just happens to include zombies. While the entire setting of the movie would be impossible without the undead, the characters themselves are what truly brought the movie to life. The 4 main characters all work together perfectly, in both dialogue and action, in a way that makes you just enjoy how well everyone meshes together.

The plot, while not giving all of the details, actually gives a reason on how the zombie outbreak occurrs in the film’s world: A strange mutant strand of the ‘mad cow’ disease broke out, and a ‘patient zero’ ingested it at a burger joint, which leads to the zombie outbreak. (The fact that they are using the term Patient Zero – either based off of the book or just in general as the source of the outbreak – felt so amazingly fitting.) The population decimated, only a few sole survivors are still running around; most of who don’t stick together, and all are chasing a safe haven instead of attempting to build one.

The entire cast consists of 4 people. To start, with we have the younger guy, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), who is a loner and has developed rules on how to survive. These rules are in place prior to the Zombieland world, as he was a loner to begin with and not knowing how to fit in with society. These rules come back throughout the entire movie in one of the most entertaining ways possible (If you are a fan of the show “Fringe”, you’ll quickly get why I felt the rule demonstrations were entertaining. If you aren’t? You’ll get a kick out of how they are demonstrated!) While on the run, he meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who is the modern day equivalent of a cowboy. He really gets to play the ‘total badass’ who has the most fun and creative ways on killing the swarms of undead. The two man team eventually come upon two sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who end up ruining their entire plan. On a side note, the entire movie could have been considered a giant Twinkie commercial – you’ll get it when you see it.

Visually, the entire film shows where the budget went to: The introduction had some amazing slow motion effects that just blow you away followed up by the introduction of the rules. As I mentioned, Columbus’ “rules” on survival end up popping up throughout the entire film, in both fun and visually amusing ways that you’ll get a laugh out of each time they are on screen. For the gore fans out there? Worried how a big budget zombie movie is going to treat you? This has an “R”-rating for a reason! While the gore isn’t prevalent throughout the entire movie, when it’s on screen oh is it noticeable and in many cases unique! (They also do a great job at the over-the-top but not-unbelievably-so blood spray from any heavy impacts.) The zombies? Honestly it’s quite surprising that the zombies aren’t in the film for the majority of the middle portion of the movie, with how amazing they are when on screen. Running through smaller towns, the 4-pack of survivors also don’t run across a lot of the undead gathered in groups until near the very end. And, yes – the main call for a large group of zombies is brought forth by doing something stupid. You know what’s going to happen before it does, and can’t decide whether to cringe at what’s about to happen or enjoy the moment. You WILL enjoy the moment.

I promised I would try to not geek out and give you details. So my favorite part of the movie is the celebrity guest appearance. WARNING! DANGER! SPOILER HERE! who just happens to be Bill Fucking Murray. I don’t think the audience could stop laughing for the entirety of the scene with how well he did at playing himself. His entire scene lasts 10-15 minutes, or at least it seems to because of how exquisitely done it is. And by “entirety”, I mean every single second: upon entering his house, to the “Ghostbusters” nods, to – let’s face it – EVERYTHING.