Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) - Movie Review

2009’s Zombieland was a pretty big turning point for both the people involved in its production and for its genre. As far as zombie cinema is concerned, its highly self-referential and tongue-in-cheek approach to the running dead makes for one of the bigger splashes the genre has seen this side of the new millennium. And for its production crew, it was the first big break that led to much bigger things: Jesse Eisenberg was on the cusp of his defining role in The Social Network, Emma Stone was on her way to becoming one of the best romantic leads of the modern era, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s first collaboration here would lead to great success with Life and the Deadpool movies, and director Ruben Fleischer… well, I won’t hold Venom against him, but he got a big boost from it too.

Enter the sequel, and things feel a bit… off. The zombie horror-comedy has gone through many phases since the original, and while this keeps the characteristic sense of humour intact, it still ends up being slighter than it used to be. Part of that might be down to the writing itself, which features a lot more one-off moments where a little less than half of them build to something of note in the finale, turning this into a road trip where the stops don’t have as much impact.

But largely, it’s because of the new characters this time around, and it starts on a particularly rough note. Zoey Deutch’s Madison, an intentionally-stupid Valley Girl caricature, finds Reese, Wernick and new co-writer Dave Callaham struggling with the abrasive/charming dichotomy that the former two pretty much nailed the first time around.

From the reheated romantic tension she creates between between Eisenberg’s Columbus and Stone’s Wichita, to the constant clear-miss jokes, to the fact that this isn’t exactly a performance that turns me around on my general loathing for this character archetype, this is not a good presence on-screen. And when combined with the facsimile Columbus and Tallahassee that show up later, it kind of flies in the face of the original’s entire point. The zombies are meant to represent the effects of social isolation, and yet these fucks make a life of total solitude seem like the best idea ever.

In-between the new gags about them all living in the White House, Tallahassee’s newly-established love for Elvis, and Little Rock finding love in a hippie pacifist (which thankfully avoids the expected ‘pacifists are cowards’ jokes and sticks to the accepted notion that dudes who play acoustic guitar tend to be pretty douchey), the main cast feel like they’ve been reset from the quite affecting conclusion they met a decade earlier. Any sense of surrogate family or social fulfilment that made the first film so fucking good as zombie analogy are pretty much forgotten, right down to Wichita and Little Rock suddenly deciding to ditch the guys (again) for even lesser reasons than before.

There are serious growing pains with this one, far more than anything in the original, and I’ll admit, I was honestly expecting to walk out of this film hating this thing, adding another disappointment to the year’s pile. And yet… I can’t say I hated this thing, and it’s all down to my weakness: The zombies.

 

It may start out on a weak Metallica-backed note with the opening credits, but as far as creativity, this has it in spades. The zombies have been added to with specific types (which admittedly don’t go as far as they could have, knowing the writers involved), the rebranded ‘Zombie Kill Of The Year’ cutaways are pretty hilarious, and the finale… man, that actually made up for Tallahassee’s “I’ve got Native American blood in me” pretences, and it is exceptionally rare for a film to get me to overlook that kind of shit.

So, yeah, this is a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of it comes down to the subjectivity of comedy, and since a hefty amount of it banks on a stereotype I cannot stand in most instances, regardless of context, it just didn’t work for me. And even beyond that, people wanting something as tightly-constructed as the original might be disappointed, as all the creative kills in the world can’t make up for the genuine heart that this one ends up lacking. But for those looking for some chuckles, some Fallout-esque quips about pop culture before the apocalypse, or just some grin-inducing zombie destruction, you could certainly do a lot worse.