Zombieland: Double Tap – Film Review

Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) move to the American heartland as they face off against evolved zombies, fellow survivors, and the growing pains of the snarky makeshift family.

It may be hard to believe it, but Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland was released ten whole years ago. That initial film impressed critics and audiences all across the world with its whip-smart humor, gory zombie fun, surprisingly heartfelt moments, and an excellent cast with terrific chemistry between them.

Everything about that original film was considered to be a massive win, and upon the release of the film, many were expecting a sequel to follow suit relatively quickly. However, as you can probably tell, we only have a sequel now, and it has been an entire decade.

I vividly remember after watching Zombieland for the first time ever when I was nine years of age, I thought that it was incredible, and it was one of my favorite movies at the time. Due to the ending of the film, and the world that it set up, I expected to see a sequel within the next few years hopefully. I never would have thought it would have taken so long. Its sequel was in development hell and for the longest time, it appeared as if the follow-up would never come out.

Finally, though, its sequel Zombieland: Double Tap has been officially released with the same writer, director, and cast attached. To say that I was excited for this film would be a colossal understatement, and I was hoping that it would at least live up to most of my expectations. Gratefully, I can report that Double Tap is an extremely worthy follow-up.

One of the reasons why is because of the incredible cast returning. Eisenberg, Harrelson, Breslin, and Stone are all back and better than ever, and their characters, while still hilarious and a ton of fun to watch interact with one another on-screen, have gone through a ton of things throughout their lives. Wichita and Columbus are still dating and are happy with one another, which makes Columbus wonder what his next move should be in their relationship.

Tallahassee is still the gun-toting macho man that we all know and love, and he unsurprisingly delivers a large portion of the movie’s humor. Little Rock is now all grown up, but she still feels like she is missing something. She desperately wants to find herself a boyfriend, but it is not so easy considering that the world is infected with a highly dangerous zombie plague.

Seeing these four band together once more was such a delight to see and put the biggest smile on my face. Their chemistry is still top of the line and every scene that they are in together is a blast to watch.

Among the brand new characters introduced in Double Tap are Berkeley (Avan Jogia), a hitchhiker hippie that Little Rock picks up when driving one day, Albuquerque (Luke Wilson), who is similar to Tallahassee, Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch), who is similar to Columbus, and last but not least – Madison (Zoey Deutch), who is one of the film’s goofier characters.

Almost all of those new characters provide a ton of great laughs and exceptionally exciting moments of zombie-killing goodness which is loads of fun to watch. But, when it comes to Madison; I hated her character. In my opinion, she is the biggest issue with Double Tap. There are some sequences that could be genuinely funny if the character of Madison had just been removed from the whole picture. Instead of being comical, she just comes off as plain annoying. Every time she appeared on screen, it was boring to watch.

Also, this movie does have quite a lot of continuity errors that I could not help but notice along the way. Some things happen that just do not make any sense and make some things from earlier on in the story way too confusing.

In addition, Double Tap does suffer from some pacing issues unfortunately. The running time clocks in at ninety three minutes which is surprising, considering that it is a mere five minutes longer than its predecessor, yet feels considerably longer. This is because some scenes, while definitely funny and entertaining, did not necessarily need to be there and took away from the overall story for a few minutes.

This next thing is just a minor nitpick and it is nothing major whatsoever, but I wish we had seen more of Little Rock in this movie. She is on the poster, shown in every trailer, behind-the-scenes stills, and more. Abigail Breslin was even credited before Emma Stone on the official poster for the film. Sadly, she is barely in the film, which was a bit upsetting. Gratefully, the scenes that she is present in, are extremely entertaining and funny.

But at the end of the day, this is an incredibly satisfying follow-up to a beloved horror zombie comedy. The zombie kills are more brutal than ever which was exciting to see. There are even brand new types of zombies present in this film which makes the group have to question what they can do to bring them down and survive.

While it does have its fair share of issues, Zombieland: Double Tap is still a worthy sequel with tons of bloody zombie fun, incredible humor, and boasts an excellent cast with great chemistry.