Here’s one for you: What has three Academy Award nominees, buckets of pus, blood, guts, marrow, tissue, puke and bile, self-referential CGI bullet points, young stars discovered by Greg Mottola, a very original and thankfully less-than-serious take on post-apocalyptic films, endlessly quotable and profane dialogue, obscure (and hilarious) film references, the best celebrity cameo of the year (and possibly film history) and a title in common with the cheesiest nonexistent horror theme park ever? Battlefield Earth 2, directed by Quentin Tarantino? No. The answer is: Zombieland.

Now, thanks to new big-time director Ruben Fleischer, Shaun of the Dead isn’t the only rom-zom-com out there. Thankfully, Shaun of the Dead remains the only zom-com full of British humor (sorry to the fans of Union Jack leg pulling … by the way, Hot Fuzz was better).

Does a film named Zombieland need a plot? Let’s see: The opening credits feature zombies attacking grooms at altars, a slo-mo stripper with rotting bits bouncing chasing men in suits midday, all set to Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The protagonist (Jesse Eisenberg from Adventureland, The Squid and the Whale, in expert cool-nerd / sensitive-guy-in-Flaming Lips-hoodie mode) starts the film off with a list of horror and zombie movie conventions that he steadily debunks. He mentions them as hilarious, yet true, rules of surviving the undead road ahead: among them, cardio and checking the back seat. It’s that kind of movie, where the characters have actually seen other movies, and the audience is considered just as smart as the film they are watching.

The protagonist, temporarily named Columbus (where he’s going to search for his parents), lays out these rules so we know what kind of film we’re watching, what kind of zombies we’re dealing with (fast, infected people à la 28 Days Later, not Romero’s slow reanimated undead) and how our scrawny anti-hero has survived. With Columbus’ insular monologue narrating the hilarity, we run into Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson in top form, Natural Born Killers, White Men Can’t Jump, pretty much every other great supporting role in the ’90s), a sawed-off-shotgun-toting cowboy. Tallahassee simultaneously glorifies and caricatures tough-guy cowboys: the kind of people we expect will survive the zombie holocaust and repopulate the Earth with Hee Haw enthusiasts. His two main goals are to find a Twinkie to eat, and to blow apart as many zombies as possible. He’s hungry and pissed that his faithful puppy was murdered.

The two make an unlikely and hilarious pair — firing one-liners off each other like Butch and Sundance. They raid a supermarket searching for Twinkies (the banjo! Dear God, the banjo!) and find two scared girls in the back. One, the hot older sister Wichita (Emma Stone from Superbad, The House Bunny), is preparing to kill her younger sis Little Rock (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine), who has apparently been affected by the zombie virus. Apparently is the key word, because Columbus and Tallahassee fall for a complex ruse that reveals why the sisters have survived. Cunning matches masculine bravado as a survival skill. Needless to say, the four begrudgingly end up on the road together. Even though the girls are headed to an amusement park in California — a mythic safe haven — it pays to stick together in such fevered times.

The rest of the plot is a road movie with unimaginable twists and turns. There’s a trashing of a gift shop. There’s a flashback involving Columbus’s apartment mate (beautiful Amber Heard, Pineapple Express) that needs to be seen to be believed (and explains what begins this nerdy guy’s quest to outlive everyone for once). There’s the aforementioned cameo. If anyone attempts to spoil it, immediately beat them to death with the nearest manageable heavy appliance as if they were a zombie themselves before they say anything, for the surprise is that good and that funny. For a film without clichés, there is a scene where three stupid decisions occur in a row, but it works to advance the plot, and the film justifies it by telegraphing the breaking of a rule as the deus ex machina.

For a movie that almost succeeds at non-stop hilarity — where every line is a joke worth repeating — there are a few moments of tenderness. Moments where we care about the characters, and where — as in any film from Mad Max to I Am Legend — we would wonder about the loneliness of a world without people and how, or if, we would survive. We learn the truth about Tallahassee’s puppy, and even he stops being a caricature. We see Columbus through Wichita’s eyes. We see Little Rock and applaud innocence in the face of unspeakable terror and tragedy. We see the value of humanity and of companionship. It’s a zombie comedy, folks. Think about how profound those moments are in that context. Pause to think as you catch your breath between gut-exploding peals of uncontrollable laughter.

There’s also a zombie clown at some point. Read that again, and then buy your ticket. Even if you’ve seen Zombieland already. See it again. It’s the cinematic event of the year.