Zombieland: Double Tap

Ruben Fleischer’s 2019 film arrived exactly ten years after the first, and is set ten years later too. The delay was not idleness. Writer Paul Wernick has said what killed the early drafts was the ageing of Little Rock, still written as a small girl in them. Leaning into that gave the finished film its engine: a woman in her twenties walking out to find people her own age. The sequel turns the first film’s rules joke into a set piece. Columbus and Tallahassee meet their duplicates, Flagstaff and Albuquerque, and Flagstaff calls his list commandments, numbered in Roman numerals, while the series trademark on screen text collides with itself. The zombies are sorted too, into Homers, Hawkings, Ninjas and T-800s. The mid credits scene is a prequel: Bill Murray before the outbreak, at a junket for a Garfield sequel that does not exist, paying off his one regret from the first film. The numbers say where the series stands. The original cost 23.6 million dollars and took 75.6 million in North America. This one cost 42 million and took 73.1 million in the same market. A good fit if the rules gag played as a duel, with Zoey Deutch carrying long stretches, is enough. Not for you if you expect ten years to have produced a new shape.