Zombieland Review (Bill Murray Zombieland Cameo?)

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Zombieland Sneak Preview

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uploaded by Jordan Yerman

It's my pleasure to bring you this Zombieland review. Zombieland opens in North America on Friday,  October 2, but Tina Kells and I had a rare and wonderful opportunity to see Zombieland in a sneak preview (hence the early review), and lived to tell the tale. Oh, and we have the dirt on the rumored Bill Murray Zombieland cameo.

The short version: Zombieland is fantastic. Think 28 Days Later meets Fight Club meets Superbad. Or, think Sean of the Dead, but more American, and with a far larger budget.

The long version:

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Check it out: Zombieland doesn't waste any time on annoying exposition: this isn't a movie about how the USA gets overrun by flesh-hungry zombies, turning the entire nation into a wasteland, so it doesn't spend any time on that level of back-story. 

Zombieland is a movie about if individuals-- sole survivors, so far as they know-- can learn to trust others. Others who aren't zombies. And, believe me, just about everyone is a zombie. 

Zombieland is also a humorous study of the sorts of characters who would survive an undead apocalypse: a gleefully bloodthirsty gun nut called Tallahassee, a fastidious and timid loner called Columbus, who lives by a series of hard-and-fast rules (#31: Always Check the Back Seat), and a pair of con-artist sisters called Wichita and Little Rock. Since they don't easily let others into their respective worlds, the end of the actual world isn't as immediately devastating... at first. These are people with a will to live and a deep knowledge of pop-culture history, including zombie flicks, so they know how to get by in a world gone undead.

The plot itself is fairly straightforward: Wichita and Little Rock steal Tallahassee's SUV, twice, and the four end up driving to Los Angeles, home of a supposedly zombie-free amusement park. You can imagine how that turns out.  Running at under 90 minutes, Zombieland is ruthlessly edited for any material extraneous to the story, and the result is a delightfully tight and gorgeously shot road movie with a real love of its characters... and an irrepressible thirst for zombie blood. Anything and everything can become a ghoul-smashing/blasting/crushing/burning weapon... and everything does. Even the contents of Bill Murray's opulent Beverly Hills mansion, but I'll say no more about the supposed Bill Murray Zombieland cameo. 

In Zombieland, the inevitable death of the human race is a hell of a lot of fun everyone left the cinema smiling and laughing.

I daresay Zombieland is fun for the whole family, and, if you sneak in your 14-year-old kids, the material won't actually be too dark or traumatic for them. They may not be cool with amusement parks after dark, but hey. You can't win 'em all. Also, you'll be assessing your walk home in terms of zombie apocalypse survivability. For Vancouverites, please be advised that Kitsilano is pretty much a deathtrap, with hedges, closely-parked cars, and unlit alleys where ghouls are sure to lurk. Sorry. I give it five shambling, reanimated corpses out of a possible five shambling, reanimated corpses.

Check out the Zombies channel while you're at it.

Videos

Zombieland OFFICIAL TRAILER (HD)

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sourced by Jordan Yerman