“Zombieland: Double Tap” knows as much as you do that it has emerged in a vastly different world than when its original debuted ten years ago. And that puts it in a position where its very existence seems to be something superfluous. So, Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus narrates the film with great self-awareness that zombie-lore, both within the narrative of the film and within our world has mutated since then. The opening narration makes us put our guards down. “Yes, we know,” it seems to say. “We know zombies are everywhere now, but allow us some time to riff on them anyhow.” In theory, this sort of ironic deflection might come off as a bit too sure of itself, but the very best thing about “Zombieland” is that even with a sharp tone of irony running throughout, it never feels as if its ironic sensibilities come with dismissiveness. Instead, this sequel that feels both out of place and temporally apt, is best identified by its loose and charming verve – a found family film that articulates the vision of camaraderie in a world turned asunder.
Zombies are all abuzz now, and there’s something almost immediately compelling about the metaphors they present – apocalypse by way of the undead, with brains as their essential focus, and walking automatons, blind to emotion and moving in groups. The metaphors might seem especially apt for 2019. Fantastical metaphors are always so relevant in socially turbulent times. But what’s immediately noticeable, and at first odd about “Zombieland” is the way it resists – almost viscerally – any contextualising of politics and ideology of 2019. Ten years after American has been overrun by zombies the four heroes of the first film – Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock – continue their exploits, now as experts in the zombie-killing business. In an early stretch of the film, the quartet temporarily set up a squatting area at the White House and while the moment seems ripe for cultural commentary, the script (written by the trio of Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Dave Callaham) does not even consider engaging with anything cultural.
For a movie that is about a found family navigating the aftermath of an apocalypse, “Zombieland” feels surprisingly incidental, in a deliberate way. Even beyond its resistance to socio-cultural contexts of our world, the film rarely engages with the socio-cultural contexts of its own world in the way you might expect. And while the film’s opening emphasises the dangers of individual zombies – the film itself never feels dangerous. “Double Tap” doesn’t want you to be terrified, instead “Double Tap” wants you to feel a sense of relaxed ease – identifying its most consistent emotional mood. This is a movie with a hangout vibe, writ large. This hangout vibe is both in the way film announces itself as a film that’s best enjoyed in a relaxed, hangout atmosphere, as well as in the way the film itself represents the sort of casual hanging out of a group of evenly matched performers hanging out on screen. In short, it’s fun.
“Double Tap” is also funny. A lot of its humour relies on the way deeply familiar things are funny, so it’s a consistent chuckle throughout rather than a spontaneous belly-laugh. The loudest is elicited by new addition Zoey Deutch as a foil for each member of our quartet who shade her very obvious role in delightful ways. The film keeps preparing us for certain beats or surprises in ways that become even funnier for how they’re telegraphed. It means something though that the most striking image of the film, an embrace in the face of potential defeat that our quartet faces, benefits not from humour but from a rare naked display of emotion. “Double Tap” is slightly averse to really processing the grief that its diegetic context might demand, avoiding any potential difficult moments of grief with laughter. Of course, “Zombieland” is a comedy, so indicting it for leaning on its humour is silly but there’s something odd about the way the film skirts grief, gaining its humour from always avoiding rather than ever confronting.
This resistance seems most emblematic in Emma Stone’s Wichita. In the ten year stretch since the first film, Stone’s fame has developed the most, capped by her Oscar win a few years ago. Emma Stone the star seems to offset Emma Stone’s character of Wichita within the film. And, contextually, her Wichita is the member of the quartet given least to do. But, Stone can do wonders with her face. She deepens the role with a well-placed grimace or snort, harnessing nuance in surprising ways. It feels crazy to call her an underrated performer, but there’s something constantly surprising about how she chooses to deploy her comedic skills in ways you won’t anticipate. Harrelson, as the brash Tallahassee, attacks his role differently – all bluster and naked mugging. His way works, too. He’s got sweet chemistry with Rosario Dawson in an arc that plays off nicely, and exactly as you’d expect. But he also manages to make the film’s occasionally tetchy parental arc with Abigail Breslin’s Little Rock work when it threatens not to.
There’s a mid-credit sequence at the film’s end that doesn’t do much to add to the humour or the context of the story. It’s the single moment of the film that works better as a theory than in actually where the ironic humour seems just slightly too self-satisfied. And still, despite that final moment being its rockiest, I left the theatre with a grin on my face. Zombie narratives don’t always have to interrogate trauma and loss. Sometimes tending to familiar tropes with committed teams are good enough. And “Double Tap” is familiar and treads well-worn ground, but it’s real and earnest fun.
