Zombieland
Director: Ruben Fleische

This is a road movie and a buddy comedy, and it’s funny as hell, but it’s first and foremost a horror thriller about killing zombies. This means a lot of gnawed limbs, exploded skulls and things that go “ick” in the night — and day.

It’s a point worth underlining, maybe even in blood, because the film Zombieland most resembles is Shaun of the Dead, which wasn’t anywhere near as gory.

If you can’t “nut up or shut up,” as Woody Harrelson’s redneck zombie zapper Tallahassee commands, then you’re not even as brave as Woody’s travelling companion Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg with his usual neurotic intensity.

Columbus can’t make it with the ladies, even undead ones, but he’s learned how to handle a shotgun (he’s a crack shot, too). In his secondary role of narrator, he lists the survival rules he’s developed to evade and eliminate zombies (No. 1: have good cardio for running).

Neither of these well cast dudes is a match for sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), fellow drifters on the body-strewn road.

Together they pinball across the country, heading towards the California amusement park they’ve heard might be zombie-free.

First-time director Ruben Fleischer, who hails from video games, and his TV screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have stitched together a real Frankenstein of a plot, but don’t take that as a bad thing — and watch for the best cameo of 2009. Nut up or shut up!

Extras include cast and crew commentary, deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.

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