Ten decades ago, people played out their aspirational stories against a backdrop of upper-class wealth. Five decades ago, Suburbia had taken that crown for its own adoration. Today, we find it wholly unremarkable to set a coming-of-age comedy in a world full of zombies.
It's easier to deal with post-apocalyptic chaos and trivialized violence than to cope with our own self-identified issues. Despite the planet on fire, zombies all around us, we can continue on with our lives much as before. Is this narcissistic autonomy the key to surviving in our modern world?
Like TheRoad, this film tries to find a way to nurture the positive, while contrasting the (here comic) absurdity of dealing with flesh-eating killers. Only instead of being a crotchedy old man story, we watch a WoW wallflower master yet another hip funny video game.
This could have raised more subversive questions (as all good zombie films should), however it would have been hard to pull that off without making it into a zombie Heathers. Which we're probably overdue for.