Update #5: Zombieland
by James Roland
If you saw the early trailer for this film, you probably had the same thought that I did: so it’s Shaun of the Dead without the clever writing. Great.
But the scenes and extended trailer I saw at Comic-Con really looked fantastic. Like all great zombie movies, it looks like Zombieland makes good use of the premise, knocking off zombies in various clever and disgusting ways. And, despite the strong dose of humor (all spot-on and hilarious, by the way), it doesn’t shy away from the disturbing drama that’s so easy to mine from this genre.
What happens if your loved one gets bitten? How do you keep hope alive when you spend all day hacking up perverse corpses?
The clips we saw alternated from funny (Woody Harrelson using banjo music to attract zombies) to cool (Woody Harrelson turning a roller coaster into a zombie-killing arcade game) to real drama (Abigail Breslin duping Woody Harrelson out of his weapon by pretending to be infected).
Despite the voice-over narration, which fell a little flat, this looks like a clever script with a real fun story and committed performances from a cast who could have easily phoned it in. This easily looks like the most fun movie coming out this fall. Look for it in October.
