Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz,
Release: June, 2013
My Rating: 8/10*
Never before have I seen such an intense build-up for a Zombie film. To be fair, this is -THE- Zombie film that us deranged Zombie activists have been waiting for. This is -THE- Zombie film I have been waiting for since Zombieland. The hype is so great they've been raving about it in my local tabloid. To be fair, this is a reasonable level of expectation considering they named it after the work by cult-hero Max Brooks and got Brad Pitt on side. The only real question was would it flop like a carcass and let us all down. Well, it didn't.
If you've yet to go and see it, go. Now. In my honest and fantastic opinion, it is up there with the best Zombie films (not counting Zomedies) ever. And yes, I know exactly who George A. Romero is.
Do not continue reading if spoilers will crush your soul.
I've only just digested the gruesome amount of Zombie-Awesomeness I've just witnessed so do bear with me if my thoughts are a little sporadic. Let's begin at the beginning. Tee Hee. Let me pose a question - how many Zombie films beat around the bush for ages at the start of the film with the standard: there an outbreak, is it spreading, isn't it, lardy dar, leaving us bored and waiting? World War Z managed to condense this process into an introduction that never dragged and drop-kicked us on.
I loved the chaos of the opening scenes. Often Zombie films skip over the initial outbreak. It goes from "Ahh, Zombies eating everyone to Ahh, everyone dead and the streets are deserted", like everyone is so worthless they die out in the first five minutes then shamble off out of camera shot. While they did have a budget that probably exceeds that of the entire genre so far, they successfully managed to shoot this transaction in the film. The pharmacy scene, I thought, was brilliantly placed. All manner of shit has kicked loose. A stranger with a gun emerges from a darkened room. Is he friendly? Will he shoot? No, he helps find the medicine they need and off they go on their way. It truly was a DayZ moment placed into film... You know what I mean.
The new portrayal of what the Zee-Virus is and how it works is seemingly the next step in the genre. No longer spread by an instinctual 'need-to-feed' or severe nerd-rage issues, it is systematically spread as a conscious pathogen would be spread. Seeking healthy tissue and turning it unhealthy. I like how the impetus has moved on from the lone-Zombie to the wider picture.
It's worth talking about the Zombies... Because that's kind of why we're here. I didn't, with the exception of a pretty cheap jump-scare, find them frightening at all. Call me a massive girly-pants but some of the other films I have reviewed on this blog do successfully scare me with their Zeds and unfortunately World War Z failed on this front. They would say they are a merge of the Zombies (I use a very loose meaning of the word) of 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and any David Attenborough documentary on ants. They have the anger and ability to sprint as the Days Zombies do. They have a wonderful spring to their jumping that makes me think they could better serve by donning a cape and fighting crime. And as the intro credits rightly show, they have that animal-hive mentality that helps them overcome obstacles. If you have a fear of Zombies and ants, I commend your bravery for sitting through the whole film... The combination definitely works though, and the scene where they scale the Jerusalem barrier inevitably makes you reconsider that Zombie plan of boarding up your windows and hoping they go away. Not even my beloved treadmills would be sufficient.
I only really had a couple of nipping issues with this film and that is saying something considering my hatred of all things annoying. I think the biggest, and don't take this the wrong way, detrimental thing about this film is how the two women are characterised. I was equally hopeful and aroused when Brad Pitts wife puts the size 10 boot stomp on the Zombie when in the van. I did the whole eyelash flutter, "that is the babe for me" and pictured our awesome marriage that revolved around killing sprees of the mindless horde. Beyond the "staying-with-the-family" role, she was a hard ass when she needed to be and I thought they'd finally included a decent female character in a Zombie film.
That was until she went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like calling her husband while he is trying to be super-stealthy and... Well... Stay alive. She single-handedly kills the remaining members of his protection squad and the Captain of the troops they meet. Not to mention the supermarket scene when she needs saving from two bell-ends... Just after she put the smack down on some ravenous Undead. Ahh well, B+ for effort.
The awesome female soldier Brad Pitt hooks up with follows a similar pattern. Lobbing grenades and spaffing off rifle-rounds, she re-murders her way through a literal mountain of them and gets Brad Pitt to safety at the cost of her hand. Then survives a plane crash and wakes up before Brad. Bad-ass, right? Yeah, until they're making their way through the W.H.O. Spotted by one Zombie, they have the option of using one of their melee weapons to put it down without, with any luck, making enough noise to attract the other 79. So she decides to put three rounds in it from her pistol before it's even close, thus alerting the horde and potentially fucking the mission... I guess women can't be perfect, huh?
Bottom Line: It's a good film made excellent by its seemingly endless budget. I don't think it has anything that is truly 'new' or genre redefining in it but you can't hold that against it. The genre IS a stale genre for stuff that's 'hip' and 'down with the kids'. I rate it highly and hope they look at making another, perhaps not as a sequel but, in the spirit of the book, another story of survivors in the same world.
Slay Safe,
Merke
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