Zombieland!

Who doesn't love zombies?  Seriously, reanimated dead things which may or may not be controlled by some outside force and which may or may not exhibit a preference for human brains (although less picky types appear to be willing to eat any human flesh).  Zombies as foodies?  Why not, a lot of us are pretty extreme in our foodiness, why couldn't zombies be that way, too.  I'm imagining an Eric Ripert zombie roaming about with an Anthony Bourdain zombie arguing about the relative cleanliness and edibility of their human cuisine:

Mr. Ripert (after consuming a Wall Street banker pulled out of a limo):  The flavors are clean and classic, although perhaps too classic.  Do we give points for doing such a standard?

Mr. Bourdain:  Honestly, Ripper, we need to look for something much more complex and full-bodied in flavor.  Let's get off of Wall Street and head for the Village ...

Okay, maybe not, but you get the idea.  Zombies rock!

I remember watching Night of the Living Dead as a kid and being completely freaked out at the idea of being trapped in that house like the protagonists were with the undead trying to claw me out as if I were a big can of tuna.  Yikes!  Then there was Dawn of the Dead - trapped in a suburban shopping mall after the zombie apocalypse!  I love that George Romero got that being trapped in the mall was plenty scary and then threw zombies in the mix.  Genius.

There are plenty of zombies in gaming - Fallout 3 (one of the most amazing games of all time) has a great take on them and you run into them pretty frequently in other games.  They're always both fun and an enormous pain the rear (although nothing a flamethrower or a pump-action shotgun can't remedy).

There's Resident Evil, both games and movies, for total zombie ass-kicking - don't mess with Mila Jovavich, she'll f*** you up.

There are zombie comedies, too.  My favorites are Shaun of the Dead (the standard by which all zombie comedies must be measured), Re-Animator (so gory, so funny, so deliciously wrong), and the latest, Zombieland.

Zombies at Pacific Playland - Image via Wikipedia
Zombieland was directed by Ruben Fleischer and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin as a group of survivors trying to get to Pacific Playland (think I'm-going-to-Disneyland) after the latest zombie apocalypse.  

This was billed as a buddy movie with zombies, but it's really more a zombie movie with a cool story in the middle of it about survival and creating family. 

Everyone in the movie is great, but Woody Harrelson especially stands out as Tallahassee - a bourbon-swilling zombie killer of the first order ("My mama always told me I'd be good at something").  There's even a cameo by Bill Murray who remains one of the coolest and funniest people ever.  This movie will make you pee your pants laughing and offers plenty of gross outs along with the rules you'll need for your own survival.  Don't miss it.

FTC Disclosure:  I instantly streamed this from Netflix via my new Roku player.

Rating:  Purple

Reading Challenges:  This completes the Peril on the Screen level of the R.I.P. V Challenge!