scene analysis

Zombie land final scene

Chapter 26 1:12-1:16

Craig Haxell

Zombie land released in 2008 is an action comedy horror that entails a shy young college student travelling to reach his parents through a zombie filled America. Staring Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, Emma Stone as Wichita, and Abigail Breslin as little rock. Along the way he meets up with a boisterous zombie hater, gun toting tough guy hell bent on finding the last Twinkie. And a pair of scamming, scheming sisters on their way to an apparent ‘zombie free’ amusement park.

 The scene I am going to be analysing is the final action scene where the two sisters are trapped on a ride ‘blast off’ and while Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) leads the huge group of zombies away, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) goes to their rescue.

The first part of the scene shows Tallahassee running to a fair ground stand. The stand has lights all around the outside and a large top light inside. This makes it look like a safe haven compared to the darkness around it. It then jump cuts from angry zombies running towards the stand and to Tallahassee closing the shutters and preparing his weapons, this combined with the slow non-diegetic eerie music and the sounds of zombies builds the tension. At 0:33 in the clip it shows a birds eye view showing the number of zombies and the danger that Tallahassee is trapped. The mise-en-scene is contrasted to the situation because there are light colours and coloured bears in the stand which are associated with happy safe fun times when it isn’t for Tallahassee. The sound of the gun sots are louder than everything else and one shot is used as a sound bridge as Tallahassee aims the gun at the camera it jump cuts to Columbus slamming a door open and running out with several zombies chasing behind him in slow motion and then to the two girls still trapped in the ride franticly hitting a zombie as it tries to climb up to them.

Editing like this slows done the speed of the action as in turn the amount of action decreases. It then pans up from a pile of corpse to Tallahassee twirling his guns in his hands while western style music is played. This is used to show him as a hero and a winner as comes an end to the slow motion and the end of the mad panicking action from before.

At 1:47 in the clip as it slowly pans from in front of Columbus to over his shoulder everything but the for ground is out of focus putting the audiences attention on Columbus. It then reveals a zombie that is dressed as a clown. This shows a huge contrast. A clown is seen to be funny and silly where as this clown is far from the norm, this shows the viewer that something unexpected is going to happen.

The scene has almost no dialogue the story is told by the sound effect, which is the voice over of Columbus, which is seen to be what he’s thinking. This gives the director the ability to speed up or slow down the sequence just by the pace of the sound track playing. It also builds the tension and allows the viewer to take in all of what is happening. The way the rules are edited show how the change in Columbus attitude and the way he thinks he should go though his life and as the ‘don’t’ drops at 2:02 of the clip it shows the moment that the idea clicks in his head.