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. He has also got hold of a shotgun.Ĭolumbus's life changes when he chances upon a fellow survivor, a badass redneck called Tallahassee, played by a deadpan Woody Harrelson. 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. 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.

The director is Ruben Fleischer, whose surname might have helped to get him the gig.

But when they get a whiff of fresh meat, they can turn on a serious burst of speed. 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. D evotees 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.

Zombieland movie cover