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The new long-awaited sequel to the film that put a daft, entertaining spin on the zombie genre and made up for a less than original post-apocalyptic narrative with a laughably misfitting cast, including Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg, has arrived and its fair to say not many expected it. Ten years ago, Zombieland showcased all the energetic, stylish zombie apocalypse drama as little more than a playground for our conflict-bouncing cast to bond and humorously strengthen over with a writing team having as much no-holds-barred humour freedom as one could imagine, shown most when the film’s wit dared slack into simple celebrity recognition.
So how this simple, quirky action comedy managed to generate a sequel initially rang a few of my alarm bells with how it could possibly tighten its loose, casual script that fully-embraced the lighter, more inconsequential side of human path-crossing to get a footing ahead of its moody predecessor. How Zombieland rolled the credits on a middle-finger to anything excluding blowing off zombie heads in humorous ways and drunkenly reflecting on teenage stories made me suspect the cast, zombie motif, and a whiskey-bottle-full of random comedy was the only reasoning for bringing the film back to 2019, leading to a rehash that overblows with action and absurdity to make for unoriginality. Alas, the fears were confirmed and Zombieland: Double Tap ended up as a flick that explodes with as much hyperbolic action, pop-culture bonanza and large-scale buffoonery to try and expand on its predecessor while it unknowingly abandons all the grittiness and atmospheric unpredictability that made (most) of its humour work and instead blows all its bright camp out of the water to the point of tainting. A paradise city centres around kids obsessed with weed, cut-off montages that try to provoke random laughs to the ten people who still watch Family Guy and a desperate extended rehash of the alleyway double scene from Shaun of the Dead are only a few examples of the accentuated numbskullery of this unwanted sell-out.
Like the last film, Double Tap centres around our cast surviving in a helpless flesh-eating America with attempted variety given from introducing new characters, only much more one-sided and cartoonish than the last, which is only fitting with the film’s childish obsession with monster truck kills and marijuana. Hell, the film’s entire narrative tension centres around a thirsty dumb blonde randomly barging into Eisenberg’s life immediately after Emma Stone momentarily leaves after becoming uncomfortable about a sudden marriage proposal. From then on, all plot movements have the most pretentious consequences, including all the cast trying to escape to utopian city filled with stoners for re-civilisation and Emma Stone’s sister escaping on a roadtrip with a pretentious Indian philosopher youth only so the main narrative cast aren’t crowded and have some sort of motivation to get out of bed and blow some more zombie skullcaps off.
I honestly find it hard to scavenge for any redemption of this overblown cash grab, given all it did right were merely echoes from ten years ago, including Eisenberg and Harrelson being as quirky a duo as ever and action being stylishly wrought by slow-mo panning editing and uses of close and long shots to bring out shot impacts. The zombies themselves are very numerous and nicely viciously acted but aren’t treated as much as a threat anymore, with our cast enjoying their settled lives surrounded by infinite machine gun bullets and plot armour, until a very convenient new stronger race of them start to evolve and the cast decide it would be a rather good idea to move somewhere more protected, thus commencing the hunt for their ‘paradise’.
As for all it did badly, it either shouted me to sleep or made me wince, with Jesse and Woody’s commentary of how no-brained one of the new characters is making her no less painful to endure throughout the film. Zombieland: Double Tap initially recreated the Deadpool 2 effect, having a fine uniquely charming first film with a visual grit that spun its humour off to mostly effective execution, only to cling onto its most breathless, ridiculous moments for the sequel and hyperbole it alongside predictable brainless narratives over the course of two hours, realising its horrible mistake, and then trying to mask it up with an Olympic swimming pool of sickly saturated colour and pop culture references. While it’s far from the worst zombie film of the year, Zombieland 2 is already kicking a dead corpse by trying to revitalise an entertaining but unsubstantial harmless flick into a larger-scale explosive work that exchanges its heart and frontal lobe for inconsequential, predictable character dialogue, random unserious takes on zombies and weed.