Review #145: Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #31- Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)!

Well, it's the end of the month, the spookiest of days, and here we are! I've seen a lot of zombie cinema this month and I'm glad I did. I saw a lot of movies I'd never seen and probably wouldn't have otherwise. But more on that later.

Zombieland: Double Tap wasn't bad, exactly, but it fell victim to a lot of the pitfalls that tend to happen when a sequel is made many years after-the-fact: rather than just trying to make a good film in its own right, the filmmakers end up writing a love letter to the previous film and/or the fandom that's arisen around it. This movie's focus on listing a bunch of rules (something I liked in the previous film) is an example of this. It didn't feel organic, it just felt like they were saying, "Remember this thing you liked? We've tried to replicate it!" And of course this extends also to the fact that they literally introduce a pair of characters intended to be caricatures of the main two leads, just so we can all point and laugh at the traits we've pointed at and laughed about for the last ten years. None of this is, itself, BAD, but it's so easy for it to come off as superficial and self-indulgent, so when the core movie isn't as good as the first it feels like a cheap attempt at endearing the audience.

I also don't like when a movie (especially a sequel with beloved characters) introduces new characters that are JUST there to be annoying. "Haha, look at how much this character doesn't fit into the group, they're just annoying, let's laugh along as all of the characters get annoyed by them." It's possible for this, too, to be done well, but I never find this a worthwhile trope unless that character actually has some legitimate presence in the movie. You can put an annoying character in your film, but you can't JUST have them be annoying, you need to also give them a heartfelt subplot where they feel like they have value on their own, rather than just being there to be laughed at. Madison could have been a legitimate character, as could Berkley, but the movie spent zero minutes of the runtime getting me to care about them AT ALL, and instead made them just the butt of the same joke over and over.

Another big problem with this movie is that it's been ten years, but it suuuuuure doesn't feel like it. What I mean is, if Wichita and Columbus have been in a relationship for ten solid years, why are neither of them remotely on the same page? If Little Rock is so fed up with Tallahassee after ten years of helicopter parenting, why is this seemingly the first time any of them have gotten that impression? It doesn't feel like this is drama created from ten years of tension, it feels like the writers just didn't know how to represent ten years of growth so they just took the characters we know and loved, told us ten years had passed, and then continued on as if no time had passed at all. I'm not saying it's impossible for them to go ten years without sorting out their problems, but the movie certainly did not do the legwork to make me feel like that was the case.

A couple more bad things: I felt like the climax of this film was entirely based on happenstance and random luck. Why did Nevada show up at all, let alone when she did? Did I miss a scene where they told her where they were going? The last time we saw her, she was inviting the crew back to where SHE lived, not indicating she might follow them on their trip. But out of nowhere, with seemingly no communication, she just happened to show up juuuust in the nick of time. (Also, how were the people on top of the building so good at tossing things hundreds of feet and bullseye-ing sprinting zombies? I saw one single projectile miss in the entire scene, when the zombies were so far away I doubt anyone could see them let alone aim at them.) I also don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to purposely let down one of the walls of the barricade. Even if the zombies were able to climb the walls, why give them an easier entrance? Again, did I miss a scene where this was described? And the last bad thing: I complained about the two female leads being unnecessarily damsel'd in the previous one, and this one thankfully avoided that, by instead making the two female leads serve basically no purpose except to motivate the two male leads into going on their adventure. Can't we have a movie where the female leads do cool stuff? Or do we still need to keep making them the nagging, needy sources of relationship drama that we see here?

I don't mean this to say the movie was bad. It was fun, there were some laughs, and it was the same characters from last time. I just think there was a lot of missed potential and a sequel after such a long hiatus has a much bigger bar to clear than this one thought it had.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Zombie Commandments

Best Movie Watched This Month: I gotta say Army of the Dead. The only discourse I've seen online about this film has been about how everyone seems to hate it (one of my coworkers seemed incredulous when I said it was my favorite movie so far), but I thought it was fantastic. Maybe it was a movie aimed perfectly at the things I like, or maybe everyone else is just crazy. Whatever the case, I LOVED it and will definitely revisit it again sometime soon.

Worst Movie Watched This Month: It still feels like cheating, but Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker was so terrible in every way and I knew that before this month started.

Most Disappointing Movie Watched This Month: I gotta say the original Night of the Living Dead. Considering it was the one that started everything, I really expected something... more, I guess.

Biggest Waste of Time Watched This Month: Definitely the Resident Evil series. Of course the Of The Dead series had a ton of stinkers, but the RE series has gotten so many sequels and it's broken so many box office records I expected something better. Instead, each movie just felt like bad fanfiction that didn't know what it was or who it was for.

Best Pleasant Surprise Watched This Month: Return of the Living Dead. I wasn't expecting much, but it was SO GOOD! A fun romp from beginning to end.