When there’s a successful movie, chances are there will be a sequel to it. Fans always want to know what happened to their favorite characters.
However, a when a movie takes 10 years or more to be made, that’s when it falls into the danger zone. While fan support for a sequel may be strong, the studio risks the following: either making an amazing movie that was well worth the wait or making a terrible movie. The first “Zombieland” came out in 2009, and 10 years have passed, which means it is in the danger zone.
While I was excited by the movie once the trailer dropped, the final product was disappointing. The movie kicks off with acknowledging that 10 years have passed, and now there are four new types of zombies roaming around. Aside from the opening sequence, you only really see three of the zombies, and they are fairly underutilized.
In the span of 10 years, the main characters Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock are still together surviving. In a classic nod to the original, the movie opens with slow motion action set. But instead of the music of Metallica, the gang is killing zombies on the White House lawn to the song, “Master of Puppets”.
What is good is the characters, all showing character development, but they all have the same essence. Tallahassee takes the place as the overprotective father watching out for Little Rock and smothering her with fatherly love. Wichita and Columbus are in a relationship, yet Wichita is a little worried about settling down for marriage. Yet they are still one big happy family.
What works about the movie is it introduces more survivors into the world. In the first “Zombieland”, we only saw the original group, along with Bill Murray. In this movie, we see that there are some humans around.
The only character who didn’t need to be there was Madison. Essentially her character is a dumb blonde. Her voice is annoying and the way she acts is just cringeworthy. I’m surprised they are still doing dumb blonde jokes, I thought those went out of style way back in the 2000s. “Zombieland 2” does have some funny moments and the action scenes are great. There are plenty of callbacks to the first movie with quotes and references. While humorous at times, it is still fairly lazy. While a callback is nice, it seems they were relying on them too much to get a cheap laugh.
This movie isn’t really bad, it just could have been better. I would stick to the original. This movie gets two and a half stars out of five.
Ryan Hill can be reached at [email protected]