Zombieland: Doubletap - Forced, but not that bad

Despite my love of all things 'zombie-related,' for some reason I never really 'got' the original 'Zombieland.' I thought it was okay, but, based on other people's opinions, everyone else seemed to love it while it just felt a bit run-of-the-mill to me.  This sequel comes quite late in terms of capitalising off the original's success - a sign that it may not be up to scratch.

Sure enough, it took a mauling from critics and kind of sank without a trace.  Having watched it now, I can sort of see where the critics were coming from.  The word I'd use to describe it is 'forced.' The first film ended and didn't really have much room to go in terms of carrying on the story.  The four heroes of the first outing all return (rare for a horror movie!) and have decent enough chemistry as we find what's happened to them in this post apocalyptic undead-filled dystopia.  There are jokes between them and most actually land.  Yet the whole story seems to be based on one plot device after the other to set them up from their happy/safe beginnings and move them into danger.

Characters split up.  You know they're going to be back together by the end of the film.  They are forced to move locations, leaving safety for more dangerous parts of America, simply because the story needs them to.  And the zombies themselves have been 'beefed up.' The problem is, when you have expert zombie-killers as the main characters, then the undead are not particularly threatening.  Trouble is, the 'souped-up' ghouls are little more intimidating than any that came before them.

A new character, played by Zoey Deutch, was introduced.  At first I thought she was quite annoying (at least she was supposed to be), but, by then end of the film, I realised that she had most of the best/funniest lines and I possibly wanted to see more of her!

The zombie genre was popular in the seventies and eighties, but got done to death.  However, when the 'Resident Evil' movies of the early 2000s brought the genre back from the grave we were given practically every type of zombie movie and spin-off we could ever want. 'Zombieland: Doubletap' is a horror/comedy with the emphasis firmly on laughs.  There's not much gore here that you haven't seen before, but there's also not much you haven't seen before full stop.  It's okay and an easy enough film to have on in the background, but you'd probably feel a bit cheated if you paid full price at the cinema for it.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that