Zombieland

Everyone has their fix, especially when it comes to movies.  Some people are into romcoms, some like extreme action, some like kung-fu, or westerns or documentaries or arty foreign films.  For me, my fix comes in the form of the zombie movie.

Oh how I love zombie movies.

By and large, the consensus amongst film academics is that the zombie represents humanity when stripped of its notions of free will and the social contract.  Yes: there are film academics.  Yes: they do study zombie films sometimes.  Yes: there is subtext to zombies.

Zombies have no desires and no social ambitions -- all that they "live" to do is feed and wander looking for food: all the while ignoring the glaring inconsistency -- if zombies are not alive (the term is undead), then why do they need to eat?


While zombie movies portray these ghouls as used-to-be living people, they serve as a metaphor for the worst-case-scenario of our consumer culture.  Mindless wanderers going from location to location in search of something that is probably not necessary to survive yet wholly desirable for temporary comfort and well being.  Like the zombie, we in the Faustian consumer culture can be temporarily satiated by acquiring, but will be compelled to acquire more.

So, that's the monster.  And, by and large, with a few exceptions and variations (and sometimes an extra level of complexity when it comes to viral infections) zombie movies revolve around the monster.  Taking from George Romero, who was not the first zombie-maker but might be the best, most zombie filmmakers plop the viewer down squarely on day 1 of infection.  A person living his life, mindlessly brushing past people and thinking that people are so predictable and shallow.  Suddenly, one of the people that he brushes against has pale skin and sunken eyes, and this one enlightened person realizes that something is terribly wrong.  Panic, sirens, car accidents, one zombie become 2, 2 become 4, 4 become 16 -- we all get a lesson in fluid transfer and somewhere a government agency sets up a safe zone.

I've always been pretty happy with this format because the best part of the zombie movie is the obligatory intestines scene, right?  But, until I saw Zombieland, I didn't realize the glaring plot hole: if zombies are the consumer culture, or at least the maladjusted state in which modern society finds itself, why is it just assumed that the government -- the very top echelon of the malaised society -- is going to have a safe zone?  Before the President can even order the barricade, the intern who lives in a rental apartment in the common part of D.C. will have been turned to a zombie from a bite he received that morning on the bus.  The White House goes down.  D.C. goes down.  New York, Philadelphia, Bangor, you get the gist.

In Zombieland, the viewer is not plopped into Day 1 of the Zombie Apocalypse.  Instead, Zombieland nestles the viewer down a few months after the outbreak.  The planes and cars have crashed, the people are by and large eaten or turned into monsters, and society has officially broken down all together.  Since all hell has broken loose, Zombieland does not bog us down with the metaphysical symbolization of American society and what it means to be a zombie and a person and where to find a safe place and blah blah blah.  The people that we meet have pretty much dealt with that already because they're still alive but alone.  This film is going to be more like Max Brooks' book The Zombie Survival Guide, in that the whys and wherefores are not nearly as important as the basic rules of survival.

Our narrator, main character, and lister of zombie rules Columbus (played by Jesse Eisenberg, the poor man's Michael Cera) was, pre-Zombie Apocalypse, an anti-social gamer who is probably a virgin.  Though people are scarce, there must be nomadic wanderers and highway travelers because when Columbus meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), he is cautious but not necessarily surprised.  Tallahassee is a little more meatheaded than Columbus, tougher, and takes great joy in exploiting the anarchy of a destroyed world (as rule #32 will tell you: take pleasure in the little things).

They are traveling towards some ideal that will probably be rubble when they get there.  This phenomenon is not unique to these two people in Zombieland.  Down the road, they meet a couple of banditas in the form of Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Little Miss Sunshine), who are making their way west to an amusement park that is supposed to be zombie-free -- a mutual delusion: when you have nowhere to go, your instinct is to invent safe places to go.

This impromptu tribe of four have trust issues, as you can imagine, but eventually coallate in their own social contract that allows them to more effectively kick zombie ass, scrounge necessities, and keep company.  A love interest grows between the two twenty-somethings, and a major motion picture star makes a cameo (I will not be a spoiler).

Zombieland is distinct from previous zombie movies because it does not purport to solve the crisis of the walking undead, it does not subject the viewer to a continuous onslaught of attacks by an ever-growing mob of zombies (there is some of that, but not wall-to-wall), and it does not wholly revolve around zombies zombies zombies.  Rather than cope with the crisis, they've moved on to provoking and hunting because, let's face it, what else is there to do?

It is a road film.  It is a movie about people who have been isolated in a new environment.  If there is no future, there is no end.  Zombieland's characters will continue on as long as they feel the need.  The frailities of human society are totally abundant in this group of four, and as they are a few of the last living people, they are destined to live each day amongst the walking undead as if it will probably be their last day.  This flick acts as a snapshot of how this crew got together, rather than an all-encompassing thematically driven metaphorical vehicle designed to inspire some sort of grandiose lesson in the back of your head. 

It's an awesome movie.  A fun movie.  A cathartic movie.  My only problem: the zombie purist in me has an issue with fast-moving zombies.  I've never been on board with zombies that sprint at the living.  But that seems to be the way these days.  I suppose the posh thing is to show zombies as plague victims, but I do like me a I died first and then my body moved around as a zombie zombie, which means that they have no brain functionality aside from basic motor skills and the desire for human flesh.  To me, that means biting at whatever you bump into but not recognizing that there is protein across the street and sprinting after it.  I think that's my hang up.  Anyway, Zombieland zombies are sprinters.

I have to deal with that.