World War Z Review

World War Z Review

Director : Marc Forster 

Cast Headliner: Brad Pitt

Original Release Date: June 21, 2013

With zombies being so popular these days in pop TV and video games, it’s no surprise that more mainstream movies will try and cash in on that rush. The Zombie Survival Guide is a fantastic book useful and funny by Albert Brooks, and the follow up World War Z is perhaps even better and a modern classic novel. Now a movie of the same name has been made, and adaptation-wise it is unfortunately mostly in name only.  Brad Pitt stars in and helped to make this, and it well… let’s get started.

Zombies are supposed to be scary, a threat of the deformed familiar. One of the highlights of the TV shows the Walking Dead is that each monster is hand-crafted with polish and amazing makeup on actors.  Pitt’s Gerry character, in this plot essentially made up for this movie, faces the terrifying threat of bad CGI.  With a budget so high, you’d think more makeup on actors could be used. It’s an artistic choice, a bad one, that the enemy in this are super high speed infected people who look are basically humans but can run nearly 20 or more mph. It’s “dangerous” for sure, but because in most scenes they are barely seen the tension is not there.

Another flaw of this movie is that it’s only rated PG-13. So even when zombies do appear, the killing of them is quick or off-screen. There’s also a useless token “I gotta help my family” thing with the Gerry clan, but his daughters are way more annoying than sweet. Besides maybe his motivation in protecting them  through a deal with the army, and a moment near the end, I pretty much forgot about them.

Gerry gets sent around the world tracking down the cause of this zombie disease and never really finds the answers. What he does find are some action set pieces scattered around the globe , in a plot which definitely has signs of development trouble , that  are mostly extremely cheesy and ridiculous.  The scene where he meets some marines in a derelict army base in South Korea and has to escape, well. The lauded siege of Jerusalem with millions and millions of zombies, uhh wacky I guess and cool just because its so extreme.  There are moments of tension even with the messy low quality CGI.  World War Z actually makes a huge improvement in the last 15 minutes or so, with a thrilling final encounter. I think the reason it’s so good is because there’s no army backup, there’s no “war”   , it’s just Gerry and some people fighting hand to hand in building corridors.

It’s a shame that a “non-war” action sequence is the best part in a movie called WORLD WAR Z. Brad Pitt is a cool action hero and charming as always, but without him this movie would lose even more.  It has its moments, but overall it’s a shame that this has the same name as a great novel.  Go for the extreme-ness of the zombies and if you like Pitt, but otherwise there’s better zombie fare out there. 7.1 out of 10