You know you've either seen a great film or a terrible film when you're at a loss for words upon leaving the theater. While not a brilliant entry in the canon of horror comedies, Zombieland: Double Tap is not a tragic piece of garbage either.
For this sequel to the rowdy and youthful Zombieland film from 2009, we have the same 4 main characters living in an overgrown and abandoned White House continuing to survive together, and bicker together, after the zombie apocalypse. The dark comedy and gory violence are still evident, and this helps keep the fun rock & roll vibe alive throughout the film. But it just feels like more of the same. I mean the same kinds of jokes, the same kinds of action sequences, and the same kinds of sarcastic attitudes from the actors. There's also the same use of dynamic, three-dimensional text injected into the screen that was used in the first Zombieland film.
The screenwriters Dave Callaham (Godzilla, 2014); Rhett Reese (Deadpool, 2016); and Paul Wernick (Deadpool, 2016) try to keep this sequel fresh by adding a new type of zombie (they're harder to kill) and adding some new stereotypical characters like a ditzy blond whose been living in a frozen yogurt freezer (Zoey Deutch, The Disaster Artist, 2017) and a pot-smoking pacifist who plays a guitar (Avan Jogia, Shaft, 2019). But these new ingredients are not enough to make this sequel exciting and new.
More of the same is fine, and that has been the formula for many other sequels. But more of the same is not going to provide anything special. I learned sometimes when you're at a loss for words after watching a film, it's because of boredom.
