Fleeing a zombie apocalypse, four ragtag survivors--Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin)--make their way from the Midwest to California, headed for Pacific Playground, an amusement park fabled to be free from the ravages of the undead.

CRITIQUE

Ah, fast zombies. There’s nothing quite like ‘em. They don’t shuffle, amble, or drag their feet. Nope, they come right for you, leaving you time to do nothing more than panic. And they rip right into you; no shaking, no tenderizing--it’s down you go.

I like fast zombies, which is part of the reason I prefer stuff like 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead over George Romero’s zombie flicks (with the other part being I think Romero isn’t much of a writer or visual storyteller). Honestly, if they’re not fast, I fail to see them as any sort of viable threat. Escaping a slow zombie (like the ones in a Romero flick) is a little like escaping a runaway from a nursing home--anyone who can’t do it simply isn’t trying.

The zombies in Zombieland are fast zombies; they’re quick, they’re mean, they’re relentless, and they’re hungry. And that’s good, because the movie wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Make the zombies in this movie slow and it would be just some sort of half-assed knockoff of National Lampoon’s Vacation, and I don’t think anybody wants to see that.

Director Ruben Fleischer (who offers up a title sequence that rivals Watchmen for last year’s best and took a budget of twenty-three million dollars and somehow made it look closer to seventy-five million) and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (whose résumés don’t exactly scream quality) have made no bones about the influence Shaun of the Dead had on Zombieland. Shaun is, as was advertised, a romantic comedy with zombies; Zombieland is a road movie with zombies.

What the two movies have in common in an understanding of the needs of the primary plot; Shaun actually works as a romantic comedy, and Zombieland (which isn’t as good as Shaun, naturally, but you’d have to be a fool to expect it to be) actually works as a road movie. The zombies here are off-screen for much of the movie, so much so that at times you may even forget about them.

But the movie’s fast, smart, engaging, and funny (often very funny) enough that you won’t care. The zombie-free scenes aren’t placeholders; in fact, I’d say Reese and Wernick spent a great deal more time working out the particulars of the non-zombie side of the story. And that’s how it should be; zombies--much like pretty-boy vampires and coming-of-age fantasy tales--are a dime a dozen these days, so an audience desperately needs something else to invest in, and you get that here. The characters are nicely drawn (and brought to life by a great cast) and the jokes and gags work (as do the gore effects). A few missteps keep the movie from being great, but you can’t help but be entertained by it.

If you haven’t yet seen the movie, there’s a good chance you’ve already read or heard about the surprise cameo. I knew about it going in (I won’t mention who spoiled it for me, but I still can’t believe someone who should have known better actually ruined something the filmmakers went to such great lengths to keep under wraps), and while I was mildly annoyed, it couldn’t ruin what could very well be last year’s biggest cinematic surprise. This is the sort of thing that could seem like a gratuitous gimmick on paper, but it actually works here, becoming an integral part of the story and delivering as many laughs as every other scene in the movie combined.

Plus, make sure to stick around through the end credits for even more fun; it’s a small bit, but it’s a great one. (I’ll give you an idea of just how important the element of surprise is to this sequence: the vast majority of Zombieland was filmed either just north or just south of where I live [I recognized a few of the locations, which was cool], and not even the people around here were aware of exactly who was involved. So to the jerk who ruined it for me: thanks a lot, jerk.)

I guess it’s no real surprise that the movie’s finale, when the zombie action starts coming fast and furious, is by far the weakest section of the movie. There are a couple of really cool moments sprinkled throughout (including one so great I wouldn’t be able to forgive the filmmakers had they not included it), but it drags a bit, and if you’ve seen a couple of people trapped by zombies while another person desperately tries to help the first two people while at the same time a fourth person unloads round and round into undead brains, well, you know.

This is the only time the movie gives itself over completely to the predictable and the obvious, and it’s a shame to see something relatively fresh and inventive fall back on the same-old, same-old. (The fact that the aforementioned cameo comes so close to the finale causes problems of its own; it’s so good that anything that follows is likely to pale in comparison, and the ending here certainly does.) Then again, I suppose if you bring in a lot of guns you eventually have to fire them...

THE VIDEO

Zombieland was shot using Panavision Genesis digital cameras, but only rarely does this disc’s 2.40:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1 onto a 50GB disc--look anything other than completely film-like. I can remember one moment that struck me as looking a little digital (it’s a dark scene, and the blacks come off as more of an ashy gray), but that’s it. For the most part the image is smooth and richly detailed; the color palette is all over the place, but the transfer has no problem handling the shifts. And the sense of depth is just incredible.

THE AUDIO

The movie’s sound design favors extremes--it goes relatively quiet during dialogue-heavy scenes and then goes for broke whenever the action kicks in. This is well represented by this disc’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (which is available in English or French). Thankfully, though, you won’t have to constantly crank the volume up and down, as there’s a nice balance to the mix.

The action really delivers, effortlessly rolling throughout the entire soundstage; the deep, tight low end provides excellent reinforcement. Dialogue always comes through clearly, even during the noisier passages; both David Sardy’s score and the excellent soundtrack selections (Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is immediately followed by Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” and it works) sound great.

A Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio Description Track is also included; English, English SDH, and French subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

Up first is a commentary by Ruben Fleischer, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Woody Harrelson, and Jesse Eisenberg, which isn’t as informative or funny as it could/should have been. It’s not a bad track, but given the movie and the participants, it is somewhat underwhelming.  

The Beyond the Graveyard Picture-in-Picture track accompanies the movie with a mixture of behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, storyboards, animatics, visual effects breakdowns, etc.

A few deleted scenes (6 minutes total, HD) are up next. Most of them wouldn’t have impacted the movie in any significant way, but I think it’s arguable that at least two of them should have been left in.

In Search of Zombieland (16 minutes, HD) is an EPK-style making-of featurette, slightly better than normal as these things go.

Zombieland is Your Land (12 minutes, HD) focuses on the movie’s production design.

Visual effects progression scenes (2 minutes, HD) offer a quick look at how visual effects were integrated into four scenes, starting with the raw footage and progressing to the finished clips. 

A selection of theatrical trailers (6 minutes total, HD) doesn’t include the movie’s official trailer, but instead offers up some of the short “viewer mail” promos that hit theaters past year.

BD-Live connectivity will grant you access to another of Sony’s movieIQ streams.

Two digital copies of the movie are also included in this package. The Blu-ray itself houses a copy that can be accessed on a PS3 and then transferred to a PSP; the more conventional copy is housed on a second disc.

FINAL THOUGHT

Nut up and check it out. And pray they don’t screw up the sequel.