Rashid Irani's Review: Zombieland

Hallelujah! Here’s a horror-comedy narrated with tongue planted firmly in cheek. First-time director Fleisher asserts that genre-bending can be as much fun as the proverbial barrelful of monkeys.

Film: Zombieland
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg
Direction: Ruben Fleisher
Rating: HHHH

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Hallelujah! Here’s a horror-comedy narrated with tongue planted firmly in cheek. First-time director Fleisher asserts that genre-bending can be as much fun as the proverbial barrelful of monkeys.

Cut, then, to a futuristic America overrun by ravenous flesh-eaters. Against all odds, a gangly 20-something (Eisenberg) has survived the zombie epidemic. In his foolhardy mission to find his missing family, he teams up with a gung-ho gunman (Harrelson) and a pair of wacko sisters (Emma Stone-Abigail Breslin).

Next: the quartet combats a continentful of creepy-crawlies. Clichéd? Perhaps, but also outrageously funny. The outcome is cartoonishly gory and yet thought provoking while tackling the subject of family relationships.

Zombieland is remarkable, too, for a brilliant sequence featuring Bill Murray, playing himself, disguised as one of the ‘born-again’ dead.

Packed with belly laughs, the script also makes striking use of voiceover narration. Towards the climax, though, the goings-on become way over-the-top.
On the acting front, Woody Harrelson is nothing short of extraordinary. The young trio Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, are all likeable.