Film Review - Zombieland: Double Tap (15)

When you love something, you shoot it in the face... so it doesn't become a flesh-eating monster.

2009's Zombieland was a Halloween-y delight - a bloody and hilarious sugar-rush of comedy horror featuring an all-star quartet. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin drove the slick 90 minute juggernaut with their bickering banter, while the movie also boasted a memorable 'as himself' cameo by a certified comedy legend. If it didn't scale the giddy heights of greatness achieved by Brit rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead, it's still a solidly rewatchable 8/10. One decade later and the original gang has finally been reunited for a deeper foray into the Zombie Apocalypse. And if the results are mixed, the movie still lands on the side of 'worth the wait'.

Zombieland ended with Columbus (Eisenberg) rescuing his beloved Wichita (Stone) and her sister Little Rock (Breslin) from a marauding hoard of undead at an amusement park with more than a little help from his reluctant redneck buddy Tallahassee (Harrelson). Having survived the mayhem, they finally acknowledged each other as surrogate family and drove off into the post-Apocalyptic night together. Years later they're an elite zombie-fighting foursome, who've made a home for themselves in some styling all-American accommodation. I mean - think big here. Tensions, however, are rising within the group. The now teenage Little Rock finds Tallahassee an overbearing father-figure, while Wichita's commitment issues with Columbus are about to come to a head. It culminates in the younger sister's running off in the company of a California hippy-type (much to Tallahassee's comic chagrin), with the other members of her dysfunctional pseudo-fam in pursuit, exchanging sarcastic zingers all the way.

The chief joy in Zombieland: Double Tap (the post-colon part of the title stems from one of Columbus's key rules for survival) is simply hanging out with the gang again. It presumably took years to get the big four on the same set at the same time, but they switch on their old chemistry with apparent ease. Harrelson has the same irascible swagger as before and his exchanges with Eisenberg have lost none of their needle. Stone meanwhile demonstrably loves stepping back into Wichita's kick-ass boots and has advanced to a doctorate in snark during the interim. There are welcome new additions too. Little Rock's road trip with her lame counter-culture boyfriend Berkeley (Avan Jogia) are consistently amusing. Rosario Dawson's Nevada is the perfect rootin' tootin country-girl foil for Harrelson. And Zoey Deutsch steals a bunch of comedy moments as Wichita's polar opposite - an amiable pink-clad airhead called Madison.

The action kicks in with the same fourth-wall-breaking, gleefully violent comic chutzpah as last time and the early scenes are a particularly rich source of funny moments, mining new veins of humour. Production values are second to none throughout, with the world-gone-to-crap set design particularly vivid in the final act. It's then that we get introduced to hippie eutopia Babylon, a truly original zom-genre location, which provides an action climax big enough to surpass the original movie's 'Pacific Playground' undead face-off.

But there are deficiencies too - significant ones, the chief among them being the lack of a truly coherent narrative. While the first film's storyline was similarly loose, it didn't awfully matter, as the bonding of the main four knitted everything satisfyingly together. This time something tighter is required. There's the whole 'journey to Babylon' rescue plot, but the movie's mid-section goes meandering, without contributing anything of significance to the whole. A subplot involving the arrival of two other survivors isn't as funny as it's trying to be, and only underscores the film's other occasional flaw - a rehashing of 2009 references way too laboured to raise a smile.

All of that's a pity, because I was game to enjoy this sequel and overall I did; much like IT: Chapter Two it'll still nestle on my shelf next to its predecessor and get taken out, warts and all, for the occasional spin. Zombieland: Double Tap justifies itself as a sequel. The Four, with their flip cynicism and suppressed affection for each other, were too much fun not to be revisited and some closure has finally been given to their end-of-the-world travails. As a second slice of zombie carnage played for character-based laughs, it ultimately proves welcome.

Gut Reaction: First act - big laughs. Second act - sticking with it in hope. Final act - thankfully brought my smile back.

Memorable Moment: Wichita, meet Madison. Awkward...

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. I can't say it's great, because the flaws struck me too hard. But it has a clutch of lovely moments and does right by the characters we first loved ten years ago. And that, thankfully, proves enough.