#MovieMonday: Zombieland: Double Tap Review: Plotless Zombie Comedy That’s Not Funny

Do you know that there’s a sub- category for zombie comedy, commonly known as zomedy?

As the name suggests, it’s a zombie show that’s peppered with slapstick comedy, and usually, it’s funny instead of scary.

In fact, even Singapore has its own zomedy movie, Zombiepura, last year:

While there has been a number of zomedy movies, it’s widely agreed that the 2009 Zombieland made it mainstream. The OG movie was a critical and commercial success, earning USD$102.4 million with a budget of USD$23.6 million, taking the spot as the top-grossing zombie film in the US.

It’s no surprise that there’s a sequel to it, and with such big shoes to fill, can they meet our expectations?

Especially so when the zombie apocalyptic genre hasn’t been in the cinemas for quite a while?

Let’s find out.

Zombieland: Double Tap

Lest you’re not unfamiliar with the movie, here’s a trailer to bring you up to speed:

And here’s the synopsis from our BFF Google, which is much longer than I’d have expected:

Zombie slayers Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock leave the confines of the White House to travel to Graceland in Memphis, Tenn. Along the way, they encounter other post-apocalyptic warriors and a group of survivors who find refuge in a commune. The scrappy fighters must now rely on their wits and weapons more than ever as they soon find themselves in a relentless battle against smarter, faster and seemingly indestructible zombies.

In this sequel, the main cast reprise their roles albeit ten years older (though they look like they’ve not aged a day), joined with new cast members Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, and Luke Wilson.

While the synopsis is long, I can provide you with the shorter versions of the two movies with one sentence:

Zombieland: Survivors join force to survive a zombie apocalyptic funnily
Zombieland: Double Tap: Ten years later, Survivors join force to survive a zombie apocalyptic funnily again

I guess you know where this is going, but let’s continue.

A Movie for Laughs That Sometimes Aren’t Funny

You won’t need to have watched the first movie to understand the sequel, since it’s the same plot with a different setting.

In Zombieland: Double Tap, the survivors took refuge in the safest place in the world: the White House. Except that it’s now abandoned so there are no secret service agents patrolling every inch of the premises.

You’d have expected Trump jokes, but no: they either played it safe or they’ve written the script way before Trump took office. Either that or the writers are Trump’s bigly fans, but I digress.

The movie is low on horror and high on jokes, except that the slapstick jokes seemed to be made for five-year-old kids. Lots of hyperboles were used and it was painful seeing grownups doing silly things with guns.

I’d rather look at the mirror for a good laugh; after all, my life is a joke.

And to add fuel to the fire, I couldn’t even catch some of the jokes—neither did the small group of audience in the theatre. How do I know it’s a joke, then? I seriously don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t.

Yeah, it was that bad.

So, is it worth a watch?

I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s a movie made to attract the Halloween crowd; think of it as a clickbait movie, and when you’re inside the theatre, you’d feel cheated.

(Yeah, it’s like Goody Feed)

Rating: 1/5