I finally found the time to go and see Zombieland which was a treat I had been promising myself for some weeks. In the end it was a toss up between Zombieland and Disney's A Christmas Carol. Dickens novella is one of my favourite books but there is something flat out weird about going to see Christmas movies before Armistice Day so that will be a pleasure deferred; or not, if most of the reviews are to be believed.
Anyway Zombieland seemed appropriate given that we have been spending so much time with DFTV2 talking about the repertoire of elements that make up any genre film. One of the key elements in a zombie flick is that the zombies should shamble and stumble their way towards their intended prey. Personally I have always found that to be a bit of a flaw when it comes to generating tension - 'Oh look, here come the zombies, let's finish what we're doing and then saunter away, they'll never catch us'.
Zombieland has all of the usual zombie tropes but with one big exception - these guys could give Usain Bolt a head start and still have him for lunch. Of course it breaks the number one rule in the zombie movie code but it works. The reason it works is that the film makers understand all the other rules of zombie flicks so by cutting themselves some slack here they have a film that is fun, exciting, different and - above all - pacy. It's a different kind of zombie movie and all the better for it.
That's part of the fun of genre film-making and that's why it's important to know the rules. If you know the rules of the game then you get to dictate how it's played and if the audience know that you know they'll go with you. A perfect example? Tremors - a little gem of a film with two super performances from Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. Remarkably it's almost twenty years old and it still works as well now as it did in 1990. What makes the film so successful is that Ron Underwood knows his creature features and he knows that the audience knows them too so he can set up all the usual perilous situations and then inventively find new ways out of them.
And that's why we spend a while on genre theory; you need to know the rules before you can break them.
Monday, 9 November 2009
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