Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch, Avan Jogia, Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, Victoria Hall, Victor Riveria.
Zombies are big business, the walking dead have a licence to print money, they are a psychologists dream of interpretation and they have the unnerving ability to project a fear into us that perhaps goes beyond that of any real plague we might determine being set loose on the world; in short, zombies, it seems, can do no wrong, especially for television and certainly not for cinema.
What the makers of Zombieland originally tapped into ten years ago was one of fun, scare the viewer to death but do it with a smile, something that modern day story tellers have forgotten to do, to take the human heart to the edge but then pull it back, to give the mind the emotional detachment it requires to be able to withstand the terror that is unfolding.
Whilst Zombieland: Double Tap is big on the humour; it also has the right amount of apprehension fitting of its genre to make it stand up against the critically lauded serious efforts which crowd the medium, the tension coming from its outlook of family and the concern of the dysfunctional rather than the continued efforts to parade a message that offers little in terms of entertainment, the escapism in which both television and film offer.
Zombieland: Double Tap is a slug fest, one in which the cinema goer cannot but help feel the conflicting emotions of satirical humour and decent laughs mix freely with the free for all wrestle of heart and mind of the dystopian fall out which grips the planet in such an event. Television serials may be able to offer a greater degree of insight into the fear of travelling down a lonely road with zombies on all sides ready to kill you but it takes a master of dark comedy to make you understand the terror of the ordinary, and the passion displayed by the four main leads, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, and newcomer Madison, Zoey Deutch in particular fine comedic form, is enough to take you to those dark places and then lead you valiantly back to the light.
Zombieland: Double Tap may not have the sophistication that others of the genre employ, it might not be gritty, socially conscious, driven by a message of the environmental or the damage of the human condition but it is far and away one of the most enjoyable comedies to come out of America in 2019, a real feast for the funny bone.
Ian D. Hall