Anna Daniels
Zombies never really stopped being cool, did they? They don’t talk much, and they’re cannibals, and that combination doesn’t sound like it should to lead to “cool,” but in the late aughts and early 2010s, brain-eaters were the thing. The AMC adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic premiered in 2010, and Seth Grahame-Smith changed how we appreciate Jane Austen in 2009 forever by taking the classic 19th-century novel Pride and Prejudice and transforming it into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. That same year, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) gave us all tips on surviving the apocalypse in Zombieland.
The horror-comedy finds young Columbus navigating the world of the undead, and along the way, he’s joined by the Twinkie-hunting Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), the fiercely protective Wichita (Emma Stone), and the young Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). As hilarious as it is bloody, Zombieland is memorable for — among other reasons — all of its principal characters surviving to the end. Unfortunately Bill Murray, who plays himself, isn’t so lucky as he makes the mistake of pranking Columbus by making him think he’s a zombie. Unfortunately, Columbus believes the actor and shoots him, resulting in one of horror’s most head-turning deaths. It seems like maybe “think twice about pranks” should be added to Columbus’ list of survival rules.
It’s that much more unbelievable to consider this horror-comedy classic is a decade old when you realize the filmmakers just got around to releasing a sequel in 2019 with Zombieland: Double Tap.
Written by: Looper
