Zombieland

This is a zombie film with the running-crazy zombies rather than the undead crawling up out of their graves kind of zombies. It stars Woody Harrelson, whom I personally have blacklisted from film since his brilliant performance on Cheers, back in the day. This movie changed my mind though.

The film starts after the zombies have already taken over the country (possibly world, but it’s not really discussed). This young kid (Columbus) who’s playing the part of Michael Cera (let’s just be honest, he IS) is writing down a list of rules he’s compiling which help him to stay alive during this zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty common-sense items, so it all makes sense. He runs into Woody Harrelson – or Tallahassee – and they agree to stick together for a very short while, as long as it doesn’t interfere with Tallahassee’s search for Twinkies (yes,really).

Tallahassee plays a bad ass gun slinger who is very good at killing zombies. They come across these two girls who trick the boys into surrendering their vehicle and guns to them and despite the fact the girls get away, they keep running into each other throughout the duration of the movie. Which also means Columbus falls in love with one of the girls. They are trying to get back to an amusement park in Hollywood which they believe is zombie-free. The group runs into Bill Murray along the way and end up crashing at his house. The Bill Murray scenes are a little campy, but not too terrible. I heard a lot of people had issue with that particular part of the film, but it was passable. The girls steal the car again and head to the amusement park. It is zombie-free, until they flip on all the lights and rides and draw the attention of thousands of zombies. I won’t ruin the ending for you, but it’s probably about what you’d think it would be.

Overall, I thought this movie was really well made. The special effects, even though I loathe CGI, were pretty awesome and almost 100% believable. Lots of blood splattering and hilarious situations that, despite being outlandish, were hilarious to watch. It's meant to be funny and gory, so be ready for both of those things. And honestly, some of the best slow-motion camera work I've ever seen. It just added to the comedy in almost every situation. There was some cheesy dialogue in the film, especially with the Bill Murray stuff, but on the whole, it was VERY entertaining. Not the best zombie movie I’ve ever seen, but I liked pretty much all of it and laughed quite a bit in this film. It’s worth a look, for most people.