I saw Zombieland over the weekend to very high expectations and…it exceeded them.  If you have been living under a rock or been secluded away in a tent in some guys back yard for 18 years and haven’t seen a trailer or commercial, Zombieland is a horror-comedy about…well…zombies.  That is actually what you think…but that’s pretty surface level…it’s more about a young man named Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) meeting a handful of Survivors, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) on his way back to Columbus Ohio to hopefully find his parents. 

Columbus is the type of guy who hides out in his room playing computer games and keeping to himself.  He is admittedly afraid of life and now that the world is overrun with zombies…he has some good reasons to be afraid.   In order to survive “Zombieland” he has formulated a list in order to keep him alive.  The list is a lasting theme throughout the movie and I will stop there so I don’t spoil anything for you who will eventually see the movie.

Even though Columbus is considered the main character and the person the movie revolves around, Tallahassee is the guy everyone wants to see.   Woody plays a man hell-bent on killing as many zombies as humanly possible while searching for the ever so needed and very rare twinkie.  He takes pride in his zombie kills and tries to find new and inventive ways to kill them.  He has a truck fashioned to take out the undead and a large arsenal of tools to get the job done.   You could say Talahassee has an artistic flare for zombie killing and I appreciate that about him.

Watching this movie I was thinking…”Woody Harrelson is fucking cool.”  Seriously, he is just as cool in this movie as he was in Natural Born Killers; one of my all time favorite movies.   Woody’s catchphrase in this movie is “Nut up or shut up,” gotta love a movie with class and distinction like that.

Now, a lot of people will start the comparison of Zombieland to Shawn of the Dead, which I think is a mistake.  The movies are both horror comedies and if you like one, you will probably like the other, but the zombies are much different.  In Shawn of the Dead, the zombies were lethargic, slow and stupid, the zombies in Zombieland are fast and vicious; in other words, these zombies don’t fuck around.  Plus Shawn of the dead was a bit more tongue in cheek and a little more parody inspired.  Zombieland is more of a traditional zombie movie with humor injected rather than a comedy with zombies injected…if you know what I mean.  I like them both but I think Zombieland is the superior film.

The gore in Zombieland was outstanding as well.  The opening scenes were fucking fantastic in super slow motion.   When people were getting eaten by zombies, running for their lives and spewing blood,  I knew from the first five minutes I was in for a treat.

Also about two thirds of the way through the movie has a great celebrity cameo that people have been talking about.  I am not going to ruin it by spoiling the celebrity but it is a pretty funny few scenes.  I think they picked the right guy to do the cameo and he had some great lines that I laugh about three days after seeing the movie.  I will say this…there has never been a cameo like this before and it was very refreshing to see such an original idea carried out to perfection.

I went to see this with my wife and as I howled at some of the jokes and sat at the edge of my seat during the action scenes…she simply said it was dumb.  One thing I know about my wife however, is that I know when she is fibbing and…yeah, she was fibbing.  I could tell she liked it; she just wanted to act “too cool for the room.” 

I highly recommend this film to both horror aficionados and the non horror hounds.  This has everything from funny to gory to, yes…a heartfelt story with a message.