When I bought this at the Lutherans for Life garage sale last year, I mentioned that I really don’t like zombie movies. This film really didn’t make me change my mind.
The front says it’s Superbad meets Shaun of the Dead. Having seen both, I assure you it is not. In it, Jesse Eisenberg plays Michael Cera–no, wait, maybe he’s playing Jesse Eisenberg, and Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg are actually the same person. At any rate, he’s a neurotic loser who has survived a couple months into a zombie apocalypse. He meets up with Woody Harrelson playing Woody Harrelson, or at least a zombie survivor who acts like Woody Harrelson. They’re headed to that rumored place where the zombie apocalypse didn’t occur–but they’ve heard different things. So they head east, and they meet up with Emma Stone in dark hair and raccoon eyes (I thought, at a quick glance at the cover, that it was Aubrey Plaza) and her sister who are con artists who trick them into giving up their guns and vehicle so they can make a trip out west to an amusement park where, it’s rumored, there are no zombies. In California, they decide to bunk at Bill Murray’s mansion, and they find Bill Murray made up to look like a zombie–because, he says, the zombies don’t bother the other zombies. Oh, and zombies, zombies, climax at the amusement park where the survivally instinctive turn on all the lights and rides and attract the attention of all the zombies in the city.
Eh. It’s amusing once or twice, but not that funny, although Bill Murray makes everything better. It’s more cartoonishly gory, but only in spots–maybe in this second quarter of the 21st century, I am getting inured to gore. Apparently, they made a sequel to it 10 years later, because I guess that’s what you do with zombie movies. The plot and a lot of it don’t make sense if you think about it, but you’re probably not supposed to.
So, I’ve seen it, and I’ve told you about it. Look at me participating in the popular culture these days, neh?
1 thought on “Movie Report: Zombieland (2009)”