Zombieland DVD

 

 

DVD Review by Kam Williams

 

Headline: Amusement Park Horror Comedy Arriving on DVD

 

                With Mad Cow disease having turned most of humanity into a cannibalistic race of mutant zombies, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) opts to travel from Texas to Ohio to check on his parents. The only reason the neurotic college student is among the few people still uninfected is because he’s so neurotic he never left his dorm room while the epidemic swept across campus. Now, as the nerdy weakling begins the dangerous trek home, it doesn’t look like he’s likely to last long battling the bloodthirsty marauders, even though he has prepared a helpful list of dos and don’ts.

Lucky for him, he soon crosses paths with his polar opposite on the macho scale, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), an alpha male with a muscle car and no qualms about killing to survive. Tallahassee has quite an arsenal at his disposal, weapons ranging from guns to bats to hedge clippers for snapping off the heads of the walking dead. However, since he’s starving and craving Hostess’ Twinkies, his first order of business is to raid an abandoned supermarket.

There, the two encounter Wichita (Emma Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), streetwise teens who steal the guys’ auto. But a little further up the road, conceding that there’s strength in numbers, the girls have a change of heart and pick the boys back up. Then, the quartet decides to drive westward to Hollywood where an abandoned amusement park is rumored to be zombie-free.

This is the engaging-enough premise of Zombieland, a splatter screamfest which generates far more mirth than tension. For, never do you get the sense that the picture’s motley crew might not survive their harrowing ordeal. Instead, you tend to focus on the comically creative variety of ways in which the four fight the swarming hordes of carnivorous creatures.

                Zombies as good clean fun, I mean, good messy fun!

 

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated R for profanity and gory violence.

Running time: 88 minutes

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, commentary by the director, the scriptwriters and actors Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg, visual f/x progression scenes, a “Behind-the-Scenes” featurette and theatrical trailers.