So what do you get, when an A-list celebrity’s own production studio adapts a social-political based book about a fictional worldwide war against a zombie outbreak, whilst having creative differences between celebrity and director, masses of over-budgetation and last minute rewrites? Apart from a terrible set-up, we have World War Z, Brad Pitt’s attempt to do a big time zombie summer blockbuster movie.
But ignoring all that to find out the really important question – is it worth your time?
Former UN investigator Gerry Lane (Pitt, Killing Them Softly) is enjoying family life until the usual American school run is unfortunately ruined by the outbreak of rabid, crazed violent humans. Barely escaping Philadelphia and exiting New Jersey, his former employers task him with finding a solution to the plague and send him backpacking round the world. Reluctant to leave his family and finding hope after hope dashed, Lane starts to put his investigation skills to good use in the search to find a solution to the “zombie” plague.
Being the only real main character, Pitt succeeds in driving this film forward. Likable enough Gerry has to face up of the responsibility of saving the world, as opposed what anyone else would do – hole up with his loved ones and pray for hope. It’s not the most engaging of performance we’ve seen from Pitt, but he’s watchable, and given the amount of trouble this film had getting made, at least it’s refreshing to see an A-lister giving a monkey’s about his performance.
His family though… you couldn’t care less for; the whole idea for this zombie movie is how it’s meant to tap into the emotional aspect of a zombie plague (with Gerry separated from his family), but since they’re all so perfect and one-note you’re left wishing they were the ones stuck with the rampant zombie hoards across the world. The younger daughter is the worst (screaming out for a poxy blanket when people are trying to smash into the family car), though the poor choices for actresses they brought in aren’t given a great deal to do to be fair, yet they hardly reinforce the symbol of family which they’re meant to.
There’s no real big name talent in World War Z to speak of, yet the cast is given an international favour. Fans of E4’s Skins may recognise one or two actors like Peter Capaldi, although he’s kept remarkably restrained compared to his Thick Of It counterpart. Unknown Daniella Kertesz hangs around in an expanded part as Gerry’s bodyguard. More familiar to Americans are the always entertaining David Morse (Treme) as an insane CIA operative and Matthew Fox (Lost) turns up in a blink and you’ll miss it cameo as a helicopter pilot.
A great deal of the failings of World War Z land with director Marc Foster; who we last saw heading up the terrible James Bond Quantum Of Solace outing. He’s learnt how to direct action since which is fine with the terrific opener of a zombie city outbreak but mixing it in with other aspects is still not his forte. It looks like a zombie film at least (with all the chaos), but there are times with weird pacing, and the terrible balance of the emotional aspects between Gerry and his family (leading to some real clown shoes intentional comedy), which will leave you scratching your head. The zombies themselves don’t look the best either; they’re pretty much kept to the CGI pile for some of the action scenes and we hardly get a good look at any up close (except for one notable exception).
Being yet another addition to a bulging genre, World War Z does at least have some decent ideas; Gerry using his wits and using rolled up magazines and box packaging to prevent bites in makeshift armour is clever and suits his job well, the scepticism in a “real world”, which is used to seeing zombies in media but fails to believe it’s happening in real life is highlighted quite well in the science discussion (and it’s a new angle in the zombie genre; instead of ‘meeting these creatures for the first ever time’ we seem to always get). Because they’re new, there’s no real way that’s been found out to take them out and whilst it seems intentional to stray from the usual shoot them in the head, it works as Gerry tries to figure out how to stop them once and for all.
Then again, there are some truly stupid new ideas mixed in too. Coupled with the rewrites, some down by our old friend Damon Lindelof (Star Trek Into Darkness and Lost), and the ending slumps onto the screen like guts out of a corpse. It’s hinted that zombies don’t target sick humans with some guff about hunters not targeting ill prey because they don’t want to get infected. Sounds ridiculous but you get the point, and handled better it could have worked. What’s worse is the solution to all this – make people sick, but curable sick… ummm what?
Gerry highlights this by injecting himself with a completely random bacterial virus. He doesn’t know what it is, how infectious it is etc. like having a lucky dip in a lab vault. He’s then seen getting patched up later on which leads to a montage of the rest of the human race starting to take it back. No way, sod off, this is stupid. There’s no fucking way a biological virus on the scale of this can be resolved in 3 or 4 days, and it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence to wash down a clever and articulate source material novel into such a generic summer blockbuster.
The lack of scale we get on the outbreak is also disappointing; there’s a great angle where America have been ignorant dicks and haven’t planned for the zombie outbreak whilst even their outposts in places like South Korea have been dealing with it and sending information making the events at the start of the movie more believable, especially when compared to other countries like Israel, who gave it notice and bricked off Jerusalem. Seems legit, until you realise other densely populated countries like Western Europe have hardly been touched by information seen on the UN boat Gerry hangs out on. Seems widely out of balance to have the Eastern American seaboard wiped out yet the UK has hardly been touched.
Not a genre buster by any stretch of the imagination but a worthy enough addition to the zombie side of cinema horror. Satisfactory in comparison to the horror show in actually getting the film made, however not worth anywhere near the supposed $200 million to get this made. Pitt is likeable in his role, zombies are always watchable (no matter how good or bad they are) and there’s hope for a decent franchise from this, but given all the problems, World War Z maybe better off dead.
