Review of Zombieland (2009) by Dave T — 29 Jan 2014

Women, one-minute you're trying to comfort them, the next they're trying to eat you.

Well In Zombieland anything goes, and if you want to survive you better have some life rules to follow and you better follow them quick. That's how the nerdy loner Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has survived two months since the apocalypse, which was brought on by a mutation of mad cow disease. From the very beginning we see the narrator's top three rules of life exercised (wait for it): #1 Cardio (there you go), #2 Double Tap and lastly #3 Avoid Bathrooms, something unavoidable if you have a bad case of the runs (there you go again).

We join Columbus on his journey from Austin Texas to Columbus, Ohio, in search of his parents. It's not long till the unlikely survivor meets fellow survivor Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) after a funny standoff, which ends in Columbus' approved hitchhike. Once in Tallahassee's car the two swap names for their hometowns and we quickly find that Tallahassee has a Twinkie in his eye for killing zombies. This borderline addiction leads them into a supermarket where they coincidentally run up on some surviving sisters - Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), after Tallahassee makes three large spills on aisle 6. However, "trust issues" stand in the way of them traveling together.

Director Ruben Fleischer, writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Resse bring black humour as dark and entertaining as the zombie's spluttered blood. And although Zombieland's not its first to rip on zombies, it's definitely up there with the best, if not in direct competition with Shaun Of The Dead for top spot, as this horror-comedy is both hilarious and highly enjoyable, even when the zombies are nowhere to be seen.