World War Z (2013)

Of course I was going to review this! How many zombie films have I looked at now? Twenty odd? Plus Dead Island, TellTale's The Walking Dead, and Survival Instinct. I've already got eight sorted for this October, Hell I think I've got one for Christmas lined up.

Former UN investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is with his wife, Karen, (Mireille Enos), and their two daughters (Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins) when chaos erupts in Philadelphia, before learning that some kind of zombie plague is gripping the planet. Gerry is forced to leave his family to investigate the pandemic by traveling the world.

Okay. The obvious. This isn't a good adaptation of the book. I suppose it can operate in the same universe, but for the most part the only similarities occur in Israel. Well, there might be something which relates to the nuclear war which breaks out between Iran and Pakistan, but it's not really touched upon. In fact I'm pretty sure there's a goof there since the EMP burst would have knocked a plane out of the sky. I suppose it depends on how far the EMP reaches, I don't know about that.

The story is all over the place though. It works much better in the book because it's basically a history book. The book is told in a series of interviews, detailing what happens during of the zombie plague. The film feels like it's being rushed. Seriously the film hops around the globe as if all the countries are next door to each other.

But the disappointing thing about the story is simple; it's underwhelming. See. In the book, it is written by someone who tries to tell us the story with "the human factor", so we get the raw emotion. For example, there are two interviews, one is about a rich person fortified his mansion, saved his friends, and then basically gloated to anyone who would listen, which eventually caused a large mob to attack them. The other is about how a military squadron fortified a street with tanks, mortars, etc, and attempted to quell a horde, only to waste their heavy artillery on the first twenty, thirty, forty, and had nothing for the million/s strong zombie horde that followed.

You could feel the emotion, the action, the tension, the desperation. I felt NONE of that watching the film. The opening action scene, the one we all see in the trailers, that was suppose to be a gripping scene, it was suppose to be immense, chaotic, powerful. Instead it feels lacking and confusing, especially since most of the camerawork is in the car with the family and there's slow motion which feels intruding. Throughout the whole film, at no point, we do not feel there is any danger, things just conveniently happen, especially one thing. I've started reading the book, I haven't finished it yet so I knew I was taking a risk watching the film, but there is one thing in the film that I pray doesn't happen in the book. You'll know it when you see it.

Then again the CGI zombies don't help. They really don't help. I guess that's why I didn't feel any tension in the film because the zombies DON'T LOOK REAL. It's bizarre. Look at the original 'Dawn of the Dead', a film that is thirty-five years old, and those zombies were threatening because they looked real. Pretty much because they are played by real people. Take the remake of 'Dawn of the Dead', where they still used real people AND made them run, but because they were real, they were threatening. The CGI zombies, aren't threatening. They look stupid, especially when you see them running and jumping.

The running CGI zombies ruin it in more ways than one actually. It's not the running in particular, I'm okay with that. I can remember one zombie thing explaining how you can have running and slow moving zombies, I think it was The Walking Dead graphic novels, and the Dead Island game had it but in reverse (basic zombies walked, higher level zombies run). Basically, freshly turned zombies still have the capability to move fast, but as they decay they lose mobility. But that's beside the point, the CGI zombies move ridiculously fast, so when you see the non-CGI zombies run, you're wondering why they're not as fast.

The acting is probably the high point. Brad Pitt delivers his normal strong performance, even if it is weird to see him in a zombie film in this day and age. Can't say the same about the rest of the cast, who gave mediocre performances as best. Then again I get the feeling a fair few of the cast didn't really care since their characters were mainly cannon fodder. I wasn't really that impressed with Enos, portraying a British woman who, as Pitt says, "lost the accent"; that's one reason as to why this American actress with a French mother can't do a British accent I suppose. Then again I was really annoyed with the bland portrayals given by Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins, you can add them to my top ten most annoying child performances list. I don't know, from 10 to 7 I should think.

Actually, I just realised, this film is rated 15 here in the UK, and it might as well have been rated U (for universal) because we hardly see ANY blood. Okay, maybe 12 for what is implied offscreen, but I don't think we even see a spec of blood. That's actually really bad for a zombie film. The original 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' got away with it because of the psychological aspect. In this film, no, nothing.

The film is disappointing, but looking up this film though, you can see why, there was some development Hell behind it; production set backs, one writer after another leaving (There were three writers), including two rewrites of the third act, and it really does show.

I can't totally condemn the film, it is watchable, Brad Pitt is great, and it does have its moments, but in the end, as I said earlier, it's underwhelming. The book has been acclaimed for reinventing the zombie genre, the film is just a rehash of what we've seen before even when separating it from the book, we don't feel any concern in the scenes even though we should, the majority of the other acting is bland, the film is rushed. I really wanted this film to work, but in the end it...I suppose it could be a fun flick to watch with drinks, but it deserved much better.