Zombies over here, zombies over there, zombies everywhere! With the zombie craze still going strong, every medium of media is getting a piece of the action. World War Z started as a book that took an interesting angle of the zombie apocalypse: an anthology of stories from survivors of the outbreak. The horror retold from the ground from people who saw it first hand.
The film adaptation starring Brad Pitt is much more conventional in it’s story telling. Abandoning the format of the book, we follow a UN employee in NYC named Gerry Lane. From the start, the outbreak is a full blown epidemic. When it reaches the city limits, the sickness travels like a tidal wave over everyone (literally and figuratively. The zombies are the sprinting variety as seen in 28 Days Later). Making it out of the city with his family, Gerry travels the globe looking for patient zero which may be the only hope of finding a cure.
Where the Romero movies are horror movies wrapped over social commentary and The Walking Dead is a showcase of how people are often the real monsters, World War Z is more of a disaster movie on a grand scale. The action set pieces are huge with hoards of undead that resemble insect hives conquering a neighboring nest. Gunfire, grenades and heavy artillery explode in a desperate attempt to slow down the end of humanity.
Overall it’s a good movie. While I found it low on horror and devoid of any gore, it’s still a tense ride. The first half is on a grand scale as you see society being trampled into the ground where the last half scales things down to just a few people in a confined environment. It’s a smart move as there’s only so much CG city destruction you can show before full action fatigue sets in and the more focused ends brings things back to a more traditional zombie movie.
Having no gore in a zombie movie is really odd, but what is shown is an exciting action movie. There’s a lot of CG monsters that look good, but the make up work (again really shown off in the last act) is very good. These guys tend to click their teeth together which makes them unintentionally funny at times and things seem to go into Brad Pitt’s favor all the time, but I can’t find much that really bugged me. Smart move with the ending too, it’s not all nicely tied up in a bow.