Content warning – Zombie gore
Jonathon L. Crane argues that the horror genre may be ‘corrupted’ to produce the ‘horror-comedy’, which is designed to conjure laughter through the ‘self-conscious’ parody of horror and its myriad generic tropes (Crane). I argue that Zombieland can be read as a ‘horror-comedy’ for the way it operates as an ‘parodic attack’ on a particular subgenre of horror — the zombie apocalypse film — through its ironic and self-aware employment of zombie-apocalypse tropes, meta humour and slapstick violence.
The central plot of Zombieland largely follows the conventions of the zombie-apocalypse film, whereby a group of survivors band together and embark on a journey to a safe haven — in this case an amusement park — while encountering a series of gruesome deaths along the way. Crane contends that in the ‘horror-comedy’, ‘the laws common to convention are suspended, rewritten, or otherwise altered’, and Zombieland self-consciously draws upon and subverts the conventions of the zombie-apocalypse film in various ways (Crane). Indeed, whilst Crane notes that ‘a good genre film must explicitly promise to play by the rules’, Zombieland takes this one step further through its main protagonist, Columbus, who shares his various ‘survival rules’ for navigating the apocalypse, ranging from the practical (e.g. ‘Double tap’), to the absurd (e.g. ‘Enjoy the little things’). In this way, the conventions of the zombie apocalypse genre are parodied by being utilised, quite explicitly, as a narrative device, delivered to the audience through Columbus’ voiceover, and various well-timed visual cues. For example, at the beginning of the film we are shown, ‘Rule 1: Cardio’, indicating the genre’s history with zombies that can run fast (e.g. 28 Days Later). In this clip, Columbus breaks his seventh rule: don’t be a hero, in order to kill the zombie-clown and save Wichita. Thus, the ‘laws’ of the zombie apocalypse genre are literally ‘rewritten’ by the film in an ironic, self-referential way, which recalls the tendency of contemporary horror films to ‘refer[s] to the history of the genre quite explicitly’ (Arnzen/Carrell).
Additionally, Crane contends that the iconic characters of horror, including the zombie, can transition seamlessly between ‘straight’ horror and the exaggerated ‘burlesque’ of the horror-comedy (Crane). In this clip, the figure of the zombie moves toward the ‘burlesque’, as Columbus voiceover exclaims ‘look at this clown’, and the camera pans round to reveal an actual zombie-clown. This moment intentionally plays with the audience’ expectations, transforming this ‘fearsome’ ‘monster‘ of horror into a comic punchline (Carrell). In this way, Zombieland demonstrates how a film can straddle the line between horror and comedy through the ‘fearsomeness’ that is situationally imbued, or detracted, from its monsters — in this case zombies — utilising self-conscious humour through its characters, in order to render them mere objects of ‘incongruity’ (Carrell). This is also achieved through a ‘ding’ sound effect which can be heard as the camera whips around to reveal a hammer, framing Columbus’ defence of his life as a kind of carnival game, and the zombie-clown an object of play — thus literalising Crane’s notion that horror is a kind of ‘cinematic funhouse’ (Crane).