Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009)

The finale of Zombieland fittingly takes place in a theme park, which I can only imagine is the writers and director acknowledging the no-thought-required good-time nature of the proceedings. It may never be very deep – no one is confusing this film with one of George A. Romero’s social commentary zombie flicks – but it’s still a helluva lot of fun regardless. Our reluctant hero and geek survivor, known as Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), has developed a rule set for how to endure in an America overrun with the living dead. When in doubt, he heeds his regulations, such as “Beware of Bathrooms” and the “Double Tap” (never leave any doubt about a kill). On his way west, he hops a ride with Woody Harrelson’s badass zombie killer Tallahassee (in a sly concept, everyone in this movie is referred to by the city they’re headed to so as to avoid making too many human connections). Eventually their little twosome will encounter a couple of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock, and they’ll form an at times double-crossing, makeshift family dynamic that results in a cross country road trip to Pacific Playland as an expedition for Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) to get one last look at the adolescence she’s missed out on. There are a number of flaws and not a whole lot of what can be called “plot” but this film, one which boasts numerous slow motion kill shots of zombies to open and even a “Zombie Kill of the Week” moment, has nothing but entertainment on its mind. And it delivers, giving Woody Harrelson a cowboy hat, a gun and a ceaseless desire for Twinkies, a hilarious cameo appearance and throwing Jesse Eisenberg into another one of his virginal fawning over the tough, indie girl roles (see: Adventureland). Maybe it could have benefitted from an extra 15 minutes of storytelling – its 82 minute runtime is pretty sparse – but still, it’s a blast… and usually one straight to a zombies head.

A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy, 2009)

Very no-frills escapist filmmaking, director David Twohy must have been on a short leash following the disaster of The Chronicles of Riddick and abandoned his sci-fi roots for a more mainstream thriller with lots of beautiful people and a beautiful Hawaii locale. And for what it is, this whodunit storyline that tries to play around with genre conventions goes down easily enough. We’ve got two couples (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich and Kiele Sanchez and Timothy Olyphant) in Hawaii on vacation who cross paths as a couple of murders take place on the island they all came from. The murderers may or may not be following them… or may or may not be among them. It’s a fine hook. Unfortunately the film also commits a handful of cinematic crimes, not the least of which is congratulating itself via its own self-referential dialogue on its clever plot twists ahead. Twohy might as well have planted signs in the ground. Also the director doesn’t have faith in the audience to go with his twist, doubling back in the third act to try and reestablish characters in hopes of making some sense of his finale. In fact in the third act, things seem to veer off course completely as suddenly we see bulging muscles and characters acting differently than they had been all the way ‘til then and even on their own, presumably without an audience watching. It’s as if the cameraman himself is in on trying to trick us by only allowing us to see what he wants. It all comes off as a bit of a sham. Timothy Olyphant again gives you shades of darkness and humor and comes out best among the cast. I tend to like him in films… but most of the time the average material he’s working with just makes me want to go back and watch “Deadwood” again.