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SYNOPSIS:
Nerdy college student Columbus has survived the plague that has turned mankind into flesh-devouring zombies because he's scared of just about everything. Gun-toting, Twinkie-loving Tallahassee has no fears. Together, they are about to stare down their most horrifying challenge yet: each other's company.
MOVIE
REVIEW:
Ever since Shaun of the Dead arises from the UK film industry to give us a comedic insight at the zombie genre, it felt that something was missing from Hollywood Land and to fill that void, we get the Zombieland. Originally conceived as a pilot episode for a new television series, the story pitch was so impressive that Zombieland was given the greenlight to expand into a full length feature.
Right from the start, it seems that it is standing on par with their UK counterpart with it's fancy fonts introductions to the rules of surviving a world that infested by zombies. It's funny, quirky and most important of all; helpful if our world do get infested with zombies. It also introduced us to the geeky loner protagonist, Columbus who survived by living strictly by those rules. Our socially awkward hero who is so used to being alone all the time, decided to set out to find his parents back in his hometown.
During his journey, Columbus met up with a few certain quirky characters such as Woody Harrelson's Tallahassee (a tough guy who specialized in zombie killing and is on a hunt for a twinkies) and two "femme fatale" sisters, (Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin)) who got their own methods of surviving this zombie apocalypse. They form a unlikely travel group and travel towards an amusement park which happened to bear happy memories for the sisters. In their journey, they would bump onto a special unexpected cameo by a well known Hollywood actor who had the best joke by mentioning his regret in his movie career.
However, as Zombieland's journey proceed, it started to meander into a region where it does not know how to close it with a climatic finish (as most Hollywood movies required for a closure). Lacking an antagonist or a climatic finale for these traveling folks to head towards, this movie took a 180 degree turn and started contradicting it self with what had been set up in the first half.
The characters started going against their rational survival instinct and did something so inexplicably stupid that a couple of them found themselves surrounded by the deadly diseased infected people. Setting up the o'so predictable damsel in distress and heroes to the rescue finale which allowed them to wham bam the zombies in a 'exciting' fashion.
In summary, Zombieland is a fun play on the Zombie genre. It had an intriguing and promising start but once the ideas run out on how to close the movie, it did something so contradictory that it kinda derail the movie's essence. Perhaps this story would have work better in a television series where it does not rush to close out the story in one seating or require to have a typical big fight ending.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Commentary with Actors Jesse Eisenberg & Woody Harrelson, Director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick -
The actors, writers and director were onboard to share various information about making this film. Although it's fairly interesting, the delivery felt rather monotonous. Jesse Eisenberg (the geeky guy) and the Director Ruben Fleischer did the bulk of commentary while Woody Harrelson and the rest just chip in when needed.
In Search of Zombieland -
Split into different sections that's titled as Rules, this segments looked into how Zombieland was conceptualized, cast and went into production. Besides praising each others talent and what they bring into this movie respectively, it also brought out how their zombies were created and how they differs from other zombie movies. The most interesting bits would be how the young starlet of this show, Abigail Breslin was mingling with the zombies extras and expressing an interest in playing one.
Zombieland is Your Land -
This segment takes a look into the production set (such as the supermarket and Columbus's apartment) and the locations that been transformed into a post Apocalypse wasteland (the highway where Cloumbus and Tallahassee first met). This segment also revealed to where the original story pitch for the TV episode ended and how it got extended by adding the amusement park as the protagonist's destination for this movie. They also revealed that the finale ending at the amusement park was filmed first and it sort of make sense why the movie didn't gel that well in the end.
Deleted Scenes -
Scenes like rule #2 about Ziplock bag which didn't make much sense and other padded scenes were removed and placed here. The only notable scenes were how you shouldn't go necrophilia with the dead zombies and why the wildebeasts would have the slow and weak in their pack.
Visual Effects Progression Scenes -
For folks who are interested to see how Visual effects were used to aid the story telling of Zombieland, this segment shows how the raw footage was filmed and how each layer of special effects were added.
Theatrical Promo Trailers -
Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) read out questions from their "viewers" and gave their contrasting survival tips in Zombieland in form of a public service announcement. These promo clips strangely lack chemistry and were unfunny at all. Not exactly a piece that would entice me to watch the movie.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
This zombie apocalypse comedy is filled with subtle special effects and random wham bam a zombie gunshots sound which the dvd was able to bring an appropriate presentation on a TV set.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
Posted on 17 April 2010
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