Zombieland

Zombieland (Reuben Fleischer, dir; 88 mins; 2009): There’s something redundant about a parody of zombie movies. While all horror movies dwell on the verge of comedy, zombie movies enter the comedic sphere head over heels. Consequently, movies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland are gilding the lily at best. Nonetheless, both movies work to a certain degree. Shaun of the Dead does so with its wit (e.g., with its premise: what happens if the apocalypse occurs and no one notices?) and Zombieland with its outstanding performance by Woody Harrelson. Both movies also work because they are faithful to the George Romero tradition (see Kim Paffenroth’s Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth) of using zombie films to offer cultural commentary as well as comedy. In fact, the opening shot of the U.S. flag in Zombieland seems an allusion to the opening of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Romero’s films were fairly intense, acerbic, and insightful social criticism. Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland are less intense and acerbic and their insights are more personal (or, more oriented to a particular segment of society). Thus, Shaun of the Dead draws interesting parallels between the slacker and zombie lifestyle and between the zombie condition and that of those who work for hourly wages. Zombieland speaks instead to agoraphobic nerds who revel in isolation and fear/hate other people. As the protagonist finally learns in the movie’s finale, “Without other people you might as well be a zombie.” In fact, the movie is, at least, partly about the creation of “family.”

Interestingly, Zombieland hides this lesson in the midst of other mostly mindless rules that the protagonist has learned and offers in voiceover throughout the film as lessons for survival in Zombieland (Who is left to hear these words and learn from them?) on his road trip to California (to Pacific Playland). Intriguingly, while the protagonist-narrator numbers these rules, we hear only part of them (#1-4, 17, 31, etc.). Thankfully, in this self-help zombie film, we do not know everything. Humorously, the other important lesson hidden in the narrator’s multiplicity of axioms comes when the gutless protagonist learns to reject one of his rules and to live instead by Harrelson’s character’s oft-repeated mantra: “Time to nut up or shut up.” It’s actually a rather interesting qualification of film’s often deadly heroism. And, yes, the protagonist is a bit like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz.