Devotees of Edgar Wright and Charlie Brooker will be aware of the debate about whether or not zombies should be allowed to run, thus unfairly tipping the balance of survival-probability away from the normal unbitten. The issue is revived in this undemanding but very enjoyable new horror comedy, about a post-apocalyptic US, in which hollow-eyed, flesh-eating folk stagger around a landscape dotted about with abandoned cars and the bifurcated remains of crashed aircraft. But when they get a whiff of fresh meat, they can turn on a serious burst of speed. The director is Ruben Fleischer, whose surname might have helped to get him the gig.
Jesse Eisenberg, the star of Roger Dodger, The Squid And The Whale and Adventureland, reprises his now familiar personality as a shy potential hottie, one of the very few survivors, and like everyone else he is known simply by the name of his hometown, in this case, Columbus. He speaks in nervy, tentative ironies (Michael Cera would have been an alternative casting possibility) and has converted nerdiness into self-reliance, periodically regaling the audience with his OCD rules for survival in voiceover – always check the back seat of cars, always be wary of bathrooms – which of course playfully double as rules for examining the zombie genre. He has also got hold of a shotgun.
Columbus's life changes when he chances upon a fellow survivor, a badass redneck called Tallahassee, played by a deadpan Woody Harrelson. After an extended standoff during which they do nothing but wordlessly point their weapons at each other, the two men decide to team up on their journey, which begins to resemble nothing so much as a very, very silly version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Our two bachelors fatefully encounter Wichita, played by Emma Stone, and her younger sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), two grifters who will do whatever it takes to stay alive. Inevitably, young Columbus falls hard for Wichita, but his chances with her are sabotaged by that big old tactless brute he's teamed up with. "You are like a giant, cock-blocking robot developed in some kind of secret fucking government lab!" he screams at one point. Their terrible journey reaches its climax in California, where Tallahassee decides to give his young friends a treat by visiting the ornate mansion owned by a Hollywood legend: a cameo turn hilarious for its sheer pointlessness.
Traditionally, zombie films are valued for their satirical qualities, but this one doesn't aspire to any commentary on our undead commercial society. It does however offer a nice line on Columbus's emotional frigidity and irrational fear of social contact. These disabilities have equipped him with the neurotically alert caution now needed to stay alive: he may have been a bit of a zombie before the apocalypse, but now his humanity has triumphed. A very ridiculous film which is also a treat.