Once the girls get to the amusement park and start lighting up the rides, hordes of zombies take notice and are soon swarming toward them. It’s a world dotted with remnants of the disaster though in a stylised way, and it all looks quite tidy (I liked the plane split in half across a motorway, fitting neatly between crashed 4x4s).Īnd while a lot of the time the four survivors are faced with just the odd zombie, when the infected do appear en masse they’re impressive – and fast. The zombies are disgusting, black blood gurgling out of their mouths.
That’s partly because our love of zombies is undiminished, and partly because the script and performances are so sharp and witty. The significance of Little Rock and Wichita, towns hundreds of miles apart, isn’t explained even though the two girls are sisters (they say they are, anyway).įor a film aimed at an audience soaked in noughties pop culture – It feels video game-like, with only four characters, avatar-like names and those on-screen rules – this holds up remarkably well. Columbus is trying to get back to his Ohio hometown to see if his parents are alive, Tallahassee is travelling there. Those names are places that have significance for the character. The girls are heading for the Pacific Playland amusement park in California, as they’ve heard it’s zombie-free, and with Columbus gradually falling for the stony Wichita the four head there together. They’ve been scamming their way for years, scratching to survive, and this post-apocalypse is just an extension of their previous existence. It’s in a supermarket on a Twinkie hunt that they’re conned by sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and 12 year old Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Tallahassee has two obsessions: killing zombies in horrible ways, and Twinkies. Meeting Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) on a freeway, the two men decide to team up for a while at least, though it’s a feature of the new world order that no one likes to get too attached.
Columbus adds more as he learns how to outrun zombies, outlive survivors, and outwit zombies and survivors, and it’s another near-death experience that leads to Rule #31, Check The Back Seat. Rule #1 is Cardio (if you can’t run fast you die) with Rule #2 the Double Tap – never assume one whack or bullet to a zombie’s head is enough. Nerdy Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has an ever-growing list of rules that keep him alive, as befits someone with a lot of phobias (and IBS, which necessitates lots of toilet trips which in turn necessitate rule #3: Beware Of Bathrooms). This is a film about four wary individuals finding out what it means to be a family, but luckily they do it while killing zombies with panache and glee (as well as Bill Murray, but really you have to allow for a few missteps after the end of the world). In the words of the great Tallahassee, it’s time to nut up or shut up. So no moaning about key plot points, unless you’re literally undead and can’t help it.
If you haven’t seen Zombieland, which came out a decade ago and was, until World War Z, the USA’s biggest-grossing zombie film, then I’m afraid I am going to spoiler it.Ĭome on, there’s a sequel out any day now, so one look at the Zombieland: Double Tap cast list shows who survived (EVERYONE! I’m not sure about Sister Cynthia Knickerbocker, the piano-wielding zombie killer, but the Lord works in mysterious ways so maybe she’ll pop up again, perhaps sucking an unsuspecting zombie into her euphonium). We only meet four survivors, though there is footage of a nun winning Zombie Kill Of The Week by dropping a grand piano on its head so I think we can assume (a) that Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock are not entirely alone, and (b) that there is indeed a god. Yet despite the millions of fast-running, virus-ridden, blood-drooling zombies, a few uninfected are managing to scythe out a space for the remnants of humanity amid the death and destruction. A contaminated burger infected with mad cow disease has turned into mad person disease which has turned into mad zombie disease, and the United States of America is now the United States of Zombieland.