As mentioned previously, I’m rather over zombie films, and when I first saw the trailer for ‘Zombieland’ I was underwhelmed. Great, I thought, a ‘Shaun of the Dead’ inflected buddy comedy with zombies and Woody Harrelson. Whatever. The only reason I showed up on cheap Tuesday to see it was an absolutely glowing review from my Internet girlcrushes, Popcorn Mafia. They loved it, I love them, I was in the mood to check my brain in the door. I had few expectations. And it totally blew my mind.
The premise is simple: it’s America, post-zombie apocalypse. The film opens with a hypochondriac college student, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who I only imagine is reiterating his uptight college student role from ‘Adventureland,’ outlining his rules for surviving a zombie apocalypse. Like many of the film’s moves – Woody Harrelson’s redneck Tallahassee, the eventual gathering of a group of ragtag survivors, the much-vaunted celebrity cameo – in lesser hands it all could have gone wrong, but overall it’s hilariously pitch-perfect. Not to mention that it has the best opening titles since ‘The Watchmen,’ after the jump.
Even though I dragged my 26 year old, decidedly past it arse to the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle, I honestly think zombies are played out and lazy. Every now and then, on one of the many, many horror/scifi/genre blogs I read and digest and absorb, a new indie zombie movie will pop up, and not one of them has caught my interest. Until this one.
While I like to think I’ve developed reasonably tough skin in terms of my film viewing, as a rule I can’t handle rapey movies. The notorious rape scene in ‘Irreversible’ just killed me, and it certainly looks like rape is fairly central in ‘Deadgirl.’ But there’s just something about this re-reading of the zombie trope, whether it’s the citation of other famous raped dead girls, or the promise of penis biting vengeance, or the violence simmering in the teenaged sexual desire and frustration that’s standard grist for the slasher movie mill, but I can’t wait for this.
My relationship to the vampire trope is a bit more complicated. I was raised on Buffy, and Joss Whedon has significantly shaped my media palate. I’ve also developed a kind of restless fixation on the Twilight franchise, the source of which is really between me and my God/therapist, but vampires have real traction for me. So I would automatically take an interest in ‘Daybreakers’, a film where vampires have won and humans are nothing but a food source. While ‘Deadgirl’ looks like it’ll have an arty aftertaste, ‘Daybreakers’ could go either way. The premise is brilliant, but that won’t necessarily stop it from devolving into another explosion-driven, dreary action film. Still, I will be there as soon as it opens.
