I loved this movie. Loved it. Start to finish, end to end, I loved this film. Is it perfect? No. But it is by far one of the best zombie movies I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen more than I can remember. It’s on a par with “28 Days Later.”
I don’t read any reviews or fan reactions until after I’ve seen a movie, so I went into this as an almost complete blank slate. I’m familiar with the book and listened to the audiobook, both of which are excellent, but when I heard there would be a movie, I had no expectations, though I knew I’d see it. It was a huge-budget feature hyper-marketed everywhere. It could suck, it could be great, it could be in-between.
Of the negative opinions I’ve read about the film since, the two chief complaints I’ve heard are bad acting, particularly from Brad Pitt, and the degree in which the film differs from the book.
Non-issue issues
On Pitt’s acting, I had no problem with it. This is not a heavily dramatic film, it’s an action film with a few dramatic moments, only one of which I thought Pitt was iffy in. In that scene, Pitt has been injured and detained and is worried about his family. A scientist says he knows how Pitt must feel. When Pitt counters that the scientist couldn’t know how he feels, since he has no family, the scientist says the reason he has no family is because they were all killed by zombies. Pitt’s character feels like an ass, which Pitt doesn’t convey well, but for the rest of the movie he’s fine, as is everyone else.
Peter Capaldi does a particularly good job as a doctor/scientist working for the World Health Organization (WHO) which is fitting since his part is billed as “Who Doctor” and he is going to be TVs 12th “Doctor Who.”
As for differing from the book, you have to. The original novel by Max Brooks provides an account of the zombie apocalypse tens years after it occurred, including social and environmental ramifications, from a variety of viewpoints. That would be best done as a series, not a single film.
To make “World War Z” the film, the filmmakers gave us a central character to tie all of the events together. That character is Gerry Lane (Pitt), a former UN Crisis Investigator called out of retirement to help solve the mystery of the zombie plague.
Quid pro quo
Lane agrees to track down the cause of the zombie virus so a cure may be found in exchange for the UN keeping his family safe at a time when resources are dwindling and safety is relative.
He starts in South Korea, where the first recorded attacks occurred. Upon learning from a CIA double agent (David Morse) that Israel surrounded Jerusalem with a wall before the attacks in Korea, Lane heads there to find out what Israel knew and how they knew it before everyone else. Each step of the way, Lane encounters more zombies, and each encounter gives him another clue about what the zombies are and how to defeat them.
Realistic terror
If you’ve seen “28 Days Later” you may recall the shock you felt the first time you saw zombies run. After decades of seeing zombies stumble, shuffle, grope, and lurch, suddenly it was a whole new ball game of death. There’s a scene about 10 minutes into “World War Z” when we’re watching the city of Philadelphia literally being swept by a wave of zombies, that provides a very similar feeling of horrified awe. It may even exceed the shock of seeing zombies run because you see it happen and you’re horrified, then the horror is redoubled, and in your mind you think it’s believable. This is the way it could happen.
Different zombie films have had different causes for their zombies, who do different things. In this film, we have a virus of unknown origin turning normal healthy humans into undead biting machines. And that’s exactly what they are this time. These zombies don’t eat the living. They just bite. They’re virus carriers with the motivation to spread the virus as much as possible. And like other viruses, it quickly becomes more aggressive. We learn that it took 10 minutes for the initial victim to turn, but when Gerry Lane sees a victim bitten in Philadelphia, it takes a mere 12 seconds, in a very well produced segment of the scene.
That makes these zombies the most terrifying I have ever seen. Think about it. They run – very quickly. They bite virtually everyone they see, and one bite transmits the virus. They don’t stop to eat the victim, which takes time. They just keep running and biting. In 12 seconds you have a new zombie, ready to bite and turn someone else. One zombie could make several others in under a minute, and each one it turns could make another, turning the one zombie who was chasing you into an army very, very quickly.
And this happens. In addition, similar to other zombies, these zombies aren’t totally mindless. They are stimulated and drawn to sensory input, particularly sound, and they will hone in on a target and do anything to get to it, including hurtling through glass or scaling a wall.
A terrifying effect created by the zombies’ combined abilities to multiply in number and zero in on targets is that there are literally waves of zombies crashing like a tsunami down the streets of Philadelphia. In Jerusalem, the zombies pile up outside the wall, then jump on the pile, scaling each other until the pile of zombies is higher than the wall. At that point they just fling themselves over, heedless of injury (they’re already dead), biting and infecting those inside, making the walls a trap for the living. This is eerily similar to army ants swarming in nature, covering an enemy or food source in seconds and wiping out huge areas of land through sheer numbers. If you’ve seen the damage the tiny creatures can do, it’s amazing, and the fictional effect is similarly jaw-dropping.
Smart book, smart film
One of the things I liked bout the book by Max Brooks was that it was smart. Zombies have been done to death, no pun intended, so what could be done differently? Brooks does several things, starting with showing the fight for civilization from the front lines, but also brining up logistical points like zombies being ineffective in extreme cold. They don’t circulate or burn calories the way we do, so in cold their meat just freezes. And again, Brooks zombies don’t eat the living, they just bite, which takes care of the question of why zombies would eat the living. They probably can’t digest us, so what would be the point?
Not all of this is in the movie, and in fact most of it isn’t, but some of it is, and the spirit of it is. For me, for one movie, that was enough. To truly do justice to Brooks’ work, a series would be needed, and I wouldn’t mind seeing that either, though two zombie series being on at the same time (the other being “The Walking Dead”) would almost certainly mean one would fail due to over-saturation, and that would be a shame.
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