Bad case of the munchies

Just in time for the holidays comes a new zombie   comedy, this one called Zombieland by director Ruben Fleischer. In it, the world (though mostly America, it seems) has been affected by a space virus that causes the dead to return to life, seeking human flesh in the usual George Romero pattern.

But, like Shaun of the Dead which came before it, and the onslaught of video games that treat killing zombies as quick-edit sport (“House of the Dead” being one such popular game), the specter of the living dead no longer has the creepy-crawly zing to it that Romero first envisioned. It’s more a terrain for satire and postmodern (i.e., Facebook Generation) commentary on our obsession with lists, failed relationships and movie violence.

Zombieland opens with the usual spirited five-minute gross-out, complete with slow-mo shots of zombies dripping entrails and gore, hot on the trail of the living. They die and explode in blood squib charges at super-slow speed, and this is only the credit sequence. As credit sequences go, it’s a grabber.

Young Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) gets through daily life in post-zombie America by concocting his own personal rulebook (lists are très important to the Facebook Generation) which includes helpful tips like “Cardio” (stay healthy to outrun rampaging ghouls), “Double Tap” (shoot zombies twice in the head to make sure they’re dead), “Wear Seatbelts” (car crashes are frequent in Zombieland) and “Beware of Bathrooms” (toilet cubicles are notorious zombie traps). He meets up with Tallahassee, a trigger-happy zombie killer played with manic zeal by Woody Harrelson and the two search for a zombie-free landscape in America, or at the very least, a stash of preserved Twinkies.

Their exploits are interrupted by sister team of Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin, best remembered as the fledgling exotic dancer in Little Miss Sunshine) who hijack the guys’ Hummer and head for Pacific Playland, a lakeside amusement part on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

This is the kind of setup that sells indie scripts these days, a time when cinematic apocalypse has become, in a strange way, moviegoers’ way of escaping from real-life crisis. Films like 2012 and the upcoming The Road (based on Cormac McCarthy’s chilling novel) are around to remind us that the end is nigh, but Zombieland plays it all for larks.

Stone (the coveted girlfriend in Superbad) plays a vampish tough chick who promises to bring her kid sister to the theme park one last time. Eisenberg (a more Jewish, nervier Michael Cera, if you can imagine such a thing) was last seen in Adventureland, an indie comedy set in an amusement park that doesn’t feature zombies, though both movies do feature Velvet Underground music, which, as noted before, is a mark of Indie Film Credibility.

You may think there isn’t room for another zombie comedy on the planet this late in the game. This one is not half bad, though. There’s an amusing turn as the quartet drops by Bill Murray’s mansion in Beverly Hills. Not surprisingly, Murray turns up for a brief cameo, playing himself. He easily steals the movie, and then he’s gone.

The script is fleshed out with countless pop cultural references, from Hostess snacks to Ghostbusters and Deliverance references. Character development, such as it is, is restricted to Columbus trying to get a girlfriend (his earlier “close moment” with the next-door neighbor from Apt. 406 is interrupted when she succumbs to a zombie bite: “The first girl I let into my life, and she tries to eat me.”). Along the way, the young nebbish does learn a few life lessons from Tallahassee (all four characters adopt the names of their home towns to avoid “attachment”), such as “Enjoy the little things.”

Interestingly, an early treatment of the screenplay (written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) featured an appearance by a zombified Patrick Swayze, an idea that must have seemed in awfully poor taste, given the Dirty Dancing actor’s medical condition (not to mention eventual death); then Sylvester Stallone was considered for the celebrity cameo. Finally, Murray was called, allowing him to allude in his cameo to his questionable voiceover work in Garfield and his reported fondness for ganja.

As with all movie versions of the undead since 28 Days Later set loose a pack of galloping ghouls, these are not your grandfather’s zombies. The old George Romero zombies, lumbering around and futilely grasping, probably seem as scary to kids today as the old mummy movies from the 1940s. (You know the joke: “Oh, no, the Mummy’s after us; let’s walk a bit faster…”) Instead, the ghouls in Zombieland shriek loudly and jump over storm fences at unsettling speeds, but they’re mostly the same old zombos. Not much innovation on that front.

Another thing that is virtually absent from the current crop of zombie movies is political or social commentary. It’s well established that Romero crafted his classic “trilogy” (in 1968, 1978 and 1985) to reflect social fears and conditions: the original low-budget film alluded to civil rights and racism; the sequel was staged in a modern-day mall and reflected blind consumerism; the third alluded to militarism during the Reagan years.

That kind of stuff just doesn’t fly with kids today. Give ‘em a few Facebook and Happy Meal references, though, and they feel right at home. There is social commentary in Zombieland, but it comes in bite-size one-liners about Hannah Montana, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and annoying idioms like “Woulda, coulda, shoulda…” Nothing that will strain any Twitterati brains.

Any luck that the zombie comedy trend will run out of steam in Hollywood before the vampire revamp trend bites the dust? Well, if the proliferation of zombie literature out there is any indication, maybe not for a while. Jonathan Maberry’s Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead (2008) is a non-fiction entry with research conducted among experts in forensics, medicine, law enforcement and the military — all readily discussing how people would react and respond to zombies in the real world (as if we didn’t have enough to worry about already). And Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) is a virtual rewrite of Jane Austen’s classic with copious zombie activity set in bucolic England. (Opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”) Gimmicky, yes; but a prequel is underway, as well as another brainstorm from the same author: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. It seems the undead, alas, are here to stay.