Review - Zombieland (2009)

 I will only be considering the First 'Zombieland' (2009) movie. All events from the sequel movie as far as narrative is concerned, will not be considered.

        When Zombieland braced screens, I was twelve years old. I was roped into the experience of watching it by a friend whose imagination was equally inspired by what might take place if our hometown was beset by zombie contagion and more importantly, the total collapse of civil society. What kitchen knives might be fashioned into a weapon of some sort or how a bus might be converted to a mobile home-turned-battering ram.

        Zombieland came slightly late to the host of zombie-apocalypse movies that rather defined alternative horror in the 2000's. Audiences were already well-seasoned with 'Dawn of the Dead' (2004), 'I Am Legend' (2007) and five 'Resident Evil' movies that set the post-apocalyptic precedent. This zombie renaissance in media wasn't strictly cinematic either. Closer to home, Channel 4 commissioned the horror-parody series 'Deadset' (2008), Wherein the contestants of reality show Big Brother remain unaware that outside, a zombie apocalypse is taking place. As the the decade concluded, American media giant ABC smashed viewing records with 'The Walking dead' (2010). Xbox and PlayStation saw the success of 'Dead-rising' (2006), the 'Call of Duty: world at War' minigame 'Nazi Zombies' (2008) and Valve's 'Left 4 Dead' franchise (2008). 

        So Zombieland can be awarded no points for originality in leading the sub-genre or advancing it, but after 'Shaun of the Dead' (2004) it was actually only the second movie to take a less-than-serious approach to the theme. The Nu-Zombie wave began in cinema, but by the time Zombieland was released, it was a genre that had legitimately spanned other disciplines of entertainment. It was just as much a movement in cinema as it was in gaming. It is no surprise then, that my imagination was arrested by this movie just as it was by Zombie survival games, as a barely pubescent lad. There was an ephemeral rush when the characters stumble upon unsupervised vehicles and duffle bags of automatic weapons, just like the circumstances of a free-roam video game of the same nature.

        This is no coincidence of course. The writers knew exactly what world of zombie-media had emerged. Video-game motifs and dopamine-triggers were ratified as tropes of the post-apocalyptic, zombie-survival experience.

        The Movie opens with the introduction of the main character and his code of survival; an anxious manifesto of rules both logical and trivial in the endtimes. With comic-book style interjections of typography and light-hearted scenarios of the rules' applications, we are immediately presented with a production that verges on the words 'alternative' or 'indie'. One such rule about seatbelts shows how even in the ruins of the old world, the main character is a stickler for protocol and procedure after civilization's demise. He is right though. 

        On his lonely wanderings through the wastelands of North America's interior, he forms a reluctant partnership with a gun-toting, cowboy hat-sporting alpha-male a few years his senior. His new partner lacks the cunning however, to detect when the virgin protagonist fabricates a sexual encounter he had not really had, three weeks prior. They campaign through Zombieland like a co-op, two-player shoot-'em-up. The main character's new protégé disregards the importance of his rules and they refer to each other by the names of the states they both wish to reach when they depart. They are brought closer together however, when their weapons and vehicle are poached by a scheming sister-duo that exploit their goodwill.

        By extraordinary circumstances, they again find themselves on the receiving end of the sister-duo's scheming, but are this time given the consolation of a lift to the nearest convenient place. this arrangement doesn't last long, for the two pairs now travel and operate as a foursome. This surrogate family manifests from the sheer necessity of trust and security, when an age of chaos and death resurfaces and abundance and comfort are no more. The main character's harrowing voice narrates here: 'We were all orphans in Zombieland'.

        They visit the house of a Hollywood star also, who's cameo is not disruptive to the narrative. It is hard to imagine now, the warranting of a big-name cameo without conceding an awkwardly large portion of dialogue and plot to them, but Bill Murray's contribution to the film is short and sweet. 

        The four stop to visit a gift shop where the unintentional breaking of a plate sparks an orgy of destruction where beaming gleefully, they toast to the shattered pieces of the old materialistic world. The world that took faculties like trust and family for granted. 

        It is easy to mistake this movie for a shallow dark-comedy or late homage to the decade of zombie-media, but I found something far deeper. A good story. Unknowingly, reluctantly and circumstantially, these four human stories converge and step into the shoes of archetypal familial relationships with each other. The apocalypse could destroy worldly institutions like the nation-state, mass-media and the armed forces, but it could not extinguish the organic resurrection of the human family. This movie isn't really about zombies at all. Like in the world of zombie gaming, they are merely environmental hazards.

        This central comment on the human return to secure and trustworthy social units when private life and civil society collapse echoed so disturbingly to me, when in the opening weeks of the response to COVID-19 outbreaks in my own country, supermarket shelves emptied as households looked to gather resources and hunker down while the outside world endured. 

        When abundance and freedom were upon us, it was not so easy to see what levels of trust people had in each other, outside of their own home. When many answered the government's call to report neighbours who were not obeying lockdown restrictions, all became clear that we were already far along the transformation of a society or communities of good neighbours to a consensus of persons that merely live next to each other and mutually recognize the state's authority. If by some world-shifting event, the state were to fall, what left would we have?

        The answer is almost Zombieland. Every household would have to look out for itself. There would be no authority on civility, and goodwill would be bordering on superstition. We are already half-way there. I believe that material abundance and the advent of technology however, makes it almost impossible to see for the less-perceptive; those whose unshaking faith in the worldly institutions has not yet faded.

        The story concludes with the four reunited after a split, with the awkward main character stepping into the shoes of a man that his new-found family needs to save the day. The viewer is brought to speculate on whether he might ever have became the man he needed to be, had the world been as it was before, after he reflects that he had found something in his new surrogate family, that he didn't have even before the apocalypse.

        As the 2010s progressed, the Nu-Zombie era had reached it's heyday, despite nine more stubborn seasons of The Walking Dead. Brad Pitt starred in 'World War Z' (2013), but it felt as though the moment had already passed, while 'The Purge' (2013) and 'A Quiet Place' (2018) felt like late after-tremors to a more general apocalyptic theme. The horror world had started to turn its eyes away from zombies in the 2010s, and back towards demonology, ghosts, the occult and European paganism. 

        'Insidious' (2010), 'Sinister' (2012) and 'The Conjuring' (2013) broke down the doors for a more religious decade of horror and Ari Aster's recently successful 'Hereditary' (2018) and 'Midsommar' (2019) directly implement the lore of Europe's darker spiritual history. I will be exploring this return of Judeo-Christian horror themes in the 2010s, in my next blog/article.