Someone in America made the fatal mistake of eating a bad hamburger, which was infected with Mad Cow. Instead of slowly killing them as usually is the case, the virus mutated, and caused massive brain swelling in its victim in a matter of hours, which in turn created a homicidal maniac with a hunger for human flesh. Thus began the zombie apocalypse in Zombieland.
The hero of the story, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), is a nerdy college kid trying to make his way home to Columbus from Austin Texas. He quickly introduces the audience to his rules of survival, like rule #1, Cardio. If you can’t run, you can’t get away from the zombies, which is hilariously illustrated by a zombie chasing a fat guy across a field. Rule #2 is Double Tap or don’t be cheap on bullets. Use a second one to make sure the zombie stays down. And so on.
He quickly meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a wise-cracking, zombie-killing machine who is on a mission to find a Twinkie. After meeting Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), they are tricked into surrendering their weapons and vehicle. A chase ensues and again they are tricked, losing their weapons and vehicle. This time though, Columbus convinces them to all work together in their goal to get to Pacific Playland, an amusement park outside Los Angeles. There, they discover all sorts of odd things.
Zombieland is more comedy than horror (zomedy?), so for those of you who are looking for gore and gruesomeness, you’ll have to get your fix elsewhere. There are scenes of zombies munching on hapless people, but the gore is minimal and secondary to the film. The zombies in the movie are also of the fast variety, so purists may not enjoy it as much as the typical Romero versions. And finally, because the zombies were created by mad cow, a brain shot is not necessary to kill them.
However, despite these ‘flaws’, the movie is highly entertaining. It is fast paced, action packed and laced with tons of dark comedy. I would guess that ...
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