LB: First Opening Analysis: Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009)

Zombieland tells the story of a teenager (Jesse Eisenberg – Columbus) travelling across America in search of his parents and a safe haven where he encounters other survivors – Tallahassee and two mischievous sisters. Zombieland is categorised as a Comedy Horror and from the offset we see that the film is set around Zombies whilst intertwined with Comedic aspects. In the opening Sequence, the first shot we see is a POV of and unknown character who is then subsequently attack and fallen prey to a zombie, thus instantly, the audience has been provided with an insight towards the basic story. Zombieland is not like many other horrors which feature Zombies as it takes a playful view on the whole scenario for example when Columbus, who we have yet to meet at this point is listing his rules for surviving Zombieland, the first being “Cardio” of which we see an overweight man running and the eaten by a zombie, as well as this there is the inclusion of dialogue “that poor fat bastard” to couple with the Comedy with the non-verbal language.

The target audience is the Horror fans age 15-24, who will enjoy the playful story, as well as find the way in which characters are depicted amusing. The preferred and most likely reading of the text is that the zombies are not scary and should not be feared regardless that the film is classed as a horror. Seen as the film is targeted towards my age group, I believe that I understood the preferred reading of the film and received it from the outset. I think that neither gender nor doe my background affect my view on the film due to the specific circumstances of the story.