Zombieland

Zombieland is a largely harmless, moderately entertaining spin on the growing list of zombie movies, though I must be pedantic here and point out that a zombie, strictly speaking and based on the Afro-Caribbean origin of the word, is a reanimated corpse. Zombieland concerns the after-effects of a virus that makes people turn into cannibals. So to start off with, the premise of the title is completely wrong.

But this film is not a PhD thesis, it is a disposable bit of fun, much like a Twinkie, the food that star Woody Harrelson craves throughout the whole story. It's also appropriate that the climax of the film is in a second-rate amusement park, for watching it reminds one of the experience of going on a ride that lasts for all of a minute and leaves one wondering what all the fuss was about.

The story takes place in an America post-virus, where most of the population has been afflicted and craves human flesh (why they don't turn on each other is never completely explained). Four hearty survivors band together. They know each other by the city of their destination--Columbus, a spindly collection of tics and phobias (Jesse Eisenberg), who seems to have wandered in from a Woody Allen movie; Tallahassee (Harrelson), a gun-toting redneck; and Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), scam-running sisters who initially con the men out of their car and weapons. The actors are all appealing. Eisenberg's character is one he has played before--it's essentially the same guy from Adventureland (another film set in an amusement park). One wonders whether twenty or thirty years from now he and Michael Cera, the other actor currently specializing in nebbish heroes, will have a momentous scene together a la Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Heat.

The film was directed by Ruben Fleischer, and he uses a large bag of visual tricks, such as superimposing graphics on the screen (Eisenberg has a long list of rules of survival) to distract us from the thin story. There's a long middle section featuring an extended cameo by Bill Murray that's very funny, but has the unintended effect of making the rest of the film seem like a let-down. I was also a bit put off by the disturbing glee of the carnage on display. Sure, it's a zombie film, but these characters enjoyed their violent streaks a little too much.