Zombieland

Posted May 24, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

Columbus is afraid of just about everything. And that’s a good thing as it’s kept him alive while the rest of the world went to hell. Two months after someone took a bite of an infected burger, the world has turned into a desolate place, filled with zombies that prefer nothing less than some nice human flesh. Tasty!

Columbus has decided to go on a road trip to see whether some of his family is still alive and while obsessionally following his “rules to survive the zombie armageddon”, he meets Talahasse, a typical macho who really hates the undead and has an unhealthy love for Twinkies. As the two continue together, they meet up with Whichita and Little Rock, two cunning girls who are on their way to Pacific Playland, supposedly the last place on Earth that’s Zombie-free…

Sound and Vision:
Zombieland doesn’t have perfect image quality but it comes very close. Except for some yellow shades in the skin colors now and then and some minor aliasing there’s really nothing to complain about. The amount of detail is staggering, the contrast is perfect and shadow detail great.

The soundtrack does a good job as well with good use of the surround speakers for the music, clear dialogues and an appropriate amount of bass. Only thing we could nitpick on would be that some more use of the surround speakers for effects would have made it even better.

Extras:
– Audio commentary track
– In Search of Zombieland
– Zombieland is your Land
– Visual Effects
– Deleted Scenes
– Beyond the Graveyard

Conclusion:
I had high expectations for Zombieland, so high that the movie can’t fulfill them. Does that mean it’s bad? Certainly not.

The first part of the movie is quite good with the usual mix of comedy and zombie-eating danger being almost omnipresent and Harrelson doing a fine job in portraying the macho Twinkie fan Talahassee. At the end we get an absolutely insane zombie shootout we’ve been waiting for and again this results in a great time eventhough you constantly get the feeling something’s missing. also the end scene with the clown just misses its impact.

In between there’s a very long sequence which doesn’t really have much zombie-fun present and tends to slow down the pace to the speed of a turtle, something that in the end results in the fact that the movie seems to take a lot longer than the 88 minutes listed on the back cover. The small part with Bill Murray does manage to uplift this bit but not enough to make you forget you were starting to get bored.

Zombieland tries to be an action-packed American version of Shaun of the Dead and up to a certain point manages to reach its goal. If only the part in the middle would have had some more zombie-stuff present it might have fully succeeded.

Rumours are flying around about a Zombieland sequel already and there’s potential to make it better than this one. Some fine-tuning here and there and you get an excellent piece of work. Not that this one isn’t one to suggest though. It’s fun, it’s got some good action and we can’t blame the movie for not being able to completely satisfy our extremely high expectations.

The blu-ray comes with a good soundtrack and stunning image quality and certainly is worth checking out.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant Moon