The Scary and Funny Movie, Zombieland(2009)

Hi, good to see you come to my blog again. The film of this week was very interesting because it was scary and funny movie. For me, I was a kind of timid character and afraid to watch horror movie. However, Zombieland(2009) by Ruben Fleischers was not scary that I expected after watching it.

Synopsis

            It was story about a famous country which was United States (USA) suffered a serious virus. This virus would cause people to become a zombie. Jesse Eisenberg (main actor) with Emma Stone (main actress), Woody Harrelson (a fearless and cowboy looks man) and Abigail Breslin (Little Rock) were planned to stick together until reach their own destination. On the way to the destinations, they betrayed each other. Will they surrender to the zombies or will they survive until the end? Who know…?

Theory Discussion

(1) Genre 1

Semantic/Syntactic Approach
     Semantic approach is something happens logically like you got a stomach ache if you ate something expired food like Columbus and his team look worried when there were many zombies in Pacific Park. This sounds meaningful because people should worry when they are having hardship experience.

     However, syntactic approach more on unexpected thing such as zombie in the Zombieland, superhero in Marvel movie which are not true in our real life. Due to this kind of approach, people started to think of syntactic will become semantic one day because they believed what the movie did can actually happen in real life. 

Case Study:

(i) Horror
       There are some genres which can discuss for this movie which they are horror, sci-fi and action. Let us talk about horror now. Just ask yourself a question ‘what do you feel when you will chase by a big group of zombies?’ We no need to think too much, the answer must be run away as fast as possible. As you are running, your heart rate increases and it will make you feel panic. So, what I thought the purpose of director made this movie was wanted to bring the audiences to experience panicked by the characters inside the film.

       There are some characters which can refer as horror type such as Frankenstein, Werewolf, Dracula, Vampires, Witches, Zombies, and The Mummy. For Zombieland, it used zombie as the character and considered as unnatural type of horror. Also, most of unnatural film focused more on bodily mutation. For instance, blood suckers, pests, creatures growing within body and altering the normal states. Furthermore, the threat in Zombieland said to be external to actors and actress inside the movie because they injured when fighting back to the zombie. 

(ii) Sci-Fi
       Sci-Fi is said to be one of the branch of the horror. This is because scientific-friction (Sci-Fi) film usually scientific, visionary, comic-strip-like and imaginative. The words 'bodily mutation' used for zombie because their body changed according the viruses they infected and also their genes as well which can see in science field.  

     Not only that but also, Sci-Fi also consisted the characteristic of complete with heroes on impossible quest which we can see in Zombieland. For example, Columbus and his team tried something impossible to escape from zombie attacks which normally people cannot do.   

(iii) Action

    

Zombieland also considered as action film because there are scenes that showed the continuous high energy physical stunts and activities. For example, zombie chase, fight zombie and escape scene. Every of these scenes were needed non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing to make it happens.   



     





Moreover, action also cannot lack of violence. For violence, it can explain an action that is very horrible which can make one side of person or thing injures. For Zombieland, we can see how Woody killed many zombies in his mercilessly.



(2) Sound       

     For sound itself, it divided into two types which they are diegetic and non-diegetic sound. According to Susan, diegetic sound defined as the source of sound is visible on-screen whereas non-diegetic was the source of which is not visible on-screen and usually exists in post-production.

     For instance, the car engine, people talking and zombie's sound are some of examples of diegetic sound which we can hear from the screen and live shooting. However, the background music such as panic and nervous cannot be hear when live shooting because this is the sound that can only hear after the live shooting.        

      

 Analysis of the theory through the film

       So, how do we relate these two theories to the film? In the book Cinema Studies:The Key Concept (2013) with page 240 and line 5-6, Susan wrote that mise-en-scene is the expressive tool at the filmmaker’s disposal which a critic can read to determine the specificity of the cinematographic work. Before discuss the sentence, mise-en-scene defines as what we see from the movie itself. So, why Susan said that miss-en-scene as an expressive tool?

            

       To answer this, the reason for this mise-en-scene is want to attract audiences who are watching the film. Normally, mise-en-scene would think by the audiences after the movie ended. Just like most of us, I am not thinking about how they shot when watching the film but I cares more on what the contents about. For Zombieland, I think that it was good setting because the flow was smooth and simple which allowed audiences like us to understand the story of the movie. Also, props in the movie they used were mostly real and they made audiences to feel more realistic.

            

       Furthermore, this scary film has the nice costume and makeup features. For example, the face of the zombies and the clothes of zombies. Next, most of the scenes in this movie were shot in night time and this was where a horror movie loved to do because the mood that would bringing to us was scare. To make the characters look more afraid, an extreme close-up was used to capture the expression from them. Besides this, their behaviours and movements also vital because this will determine their actions whether consider natural or not.

The best part of the film

      I loved this scene because it was climax of this movie. At that time, I was thinking that whether those two girls get infect or not.

The dislike part of the film     

      I felt disgusting when watching this part because the zombie was eating the dead body and even scooped organ out to eat.        

Suggestion to the film

From the book Cinema Studies:The Key Concept (2013) written by Susan Hayward with page 206 and line 36-37, she stated that bodily mutation movies were very much a central preoccupation of the unnatural horror type movie. I agreed the statement because it is good that shows the stages to become a zombie rather than just show a zombie look from beginning to the end.   

Conclusion

Last but not least, the theories used by this film were horror Sci-Fi and action. The mixing of these theories were actually good because it had showed to us that a horror movie can add on not only Sci-Fi but also action which made this film looked wonderful. Thank you and enjoy the day!

References

S.Hayward (2003), Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, Fourth Edition, Routledge, London and New York