HORROR COMEDY; 1hr 28min
STARRING: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Plucky: from left, Harrelson and Eisenberg
It’s a given from the first gross-out seconds that guilty treat Zombieland is on a fast-track of ripping flesh and spurting American blood. Except this isn’t America as such anymore: “I’ve come to realise,” weedy loner Columbus (Adventureland ’s Eisenberg) observes in his voice-over with the resignation of someone whose expectations are minimal at best, “that you can’t have a country without people.”
With the US virally overwhelmed by rampaging flesh-eaters, phobic Columbus is counting on surviving the plague solo. But when he throws in his lot with bruiser Tallahassee (Harrelson), the leanest, meanest, Twinkie-loving zombie zapper on either side of a cinema screen, he is landed with the friend he never had. Heading across country in search of escape, the two outcasts mix it up with hard-headed sisters Wichita and Little Rock (Stone and Breslin), adrift, just like them, in a country that was.
As the craziness gathers speed, first-time director Ruben Fleischer steers it into sustained spin-out. That is never the easiest course to maintain but he pulls it off with zippy wit and enough character action to keep everyone watchable. Cannibal slaying doesn’t come any cooler.
