Zombieland: Double Tap - A hilarious splash of 'who cares?' in a world full of zombie apocalypses

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

Plenty of sequels are made for no good reason. Zombieland: Double Tap may be the first I’ve seen to implicitly and hilariously admit it. 

There were reasons to expect the worst from this surprisingly loose, years-later sequel to the 2009 comedy about an oddball foursome of zombie apocalypse survivors who bond on the road amid wisecracks.

For one thing, while some are complaining about superhero-overload, inexplicably reanimated carnivorous dead people have since taken over both the big screens at home and the even bigger ones in the theatres. Zombieland: Double Tap is not even the first studio zombie comedy out this year. That honour went to Jim Jarmusch’s arch and meta The Dead Don’t Die, which debuted at Cannes.

Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg reignite the zombie war

All this is addressed in the first few words spoken as Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), in narration, welcomes the audience back, thanking them for choosing this movie when, “we know you have a wide choice of zombie entertainment.”

Later, in a pointed reference, Columbus is in bed at the White House (just another abandoned squatter shack in a zombified America), we see him reading the Walking Dead comic book, which he notes is scary, “but unrealistic.”

Those winks to the other side of the screen alert you that this is a movie in which a lot of great actors will be acting like they just don’t care, and having great fun doing it. This was kind of the appeal of the original as well. Four survival-savvy, geographically named characters, Columbus, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and her sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) end up together in a car, occasionally double-crossing each other, honing their zombie-killing skills and searching for an elusive “home.”

A decade later, that improbable foursome is still together, holed up in The White House, and arguing over who should be President. But the strains in their relationship are due to split them up again. Wichita is freaked by how serious her boyfriend/girlfriend relationship is becoming with Columbus. Little Rock, who was an 11-year-old when this started, is now a young woman chafing at the father-figure relationship imposed on her by Tallahassee. That split occurs and everybody is on the road again, in different combinations.

Narrative-wise, this is an excuse to introduce a bunch of new road warriors, some of whom will live and some not, plus some new, evolving zombies (culminating in one nicknamed T-800, a la The Terminator, who needs more than one shot in the head to die).

Harrelson and Eisenberg’s chemistry as Tallahassee and Columbus is so obvious to the filmmakers that they even introduce doppelgangers, Albuqherque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Silicon Valley’s on-the-nose Thomas Middleditch).

But the real lifeblood newbie in this movie is Zoey Deutch as Madison, a cheerful, empty-headed pretty-in-pink ditz who’s been hiding in a mall frozen yogurt fridge, and who zeroes in on Columbus as a boyfriend while Wichita is AWOL. Deutsch pretty much steals every scene she’s in. 

The road takes them variously to Graceland (where the Elvis-obsessed Tallahassee meets a kindred spirit and love interest  in the tough Nevada, played by Rosario Dawson), and to what is basically a fortified, pacifist hippie commune called Babylon.

The latter is where Little Rock and her guitar-playing, hipster poseur boyfriend Berkeley (Avan Jogia) seek zombie-free nirvana.

Even the de rigueur explosion-filled last act has an antic quality. There isn’t a moment in Zombieland: Double Tap that takes itself the least bit seriously. The gags often seem made up as it goes along, but they have a high “hit” ratio and the looseness of the whole affair means there’s no pressure to impress.

(Note to credits-watchers: Happily, you don’t have to wait long for the Easter Egg, which I will only say is a callback to a beloved cameo in the original).

Zombieland: Double Tap. Directed by Ruben Fleischer. Starring Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg. Opens wide, Friday, October 18.