Love them or hate them, zombies are everywhere nowadays. The last few years have seen the flesh-eating undead enjoy a dramatic spike in popularity, to the point that somebody even rewrote Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice to include zombies, for crying out loud. And while we're talking about zombie-oriented literature, let's talk about World War Z. Published in 2006, World War Z was author Max Brooks's follow-up to his satirical Zombie Survival Guide. It takes the form of an oral history compiled a decade after the zombie apocalypse. The book was warmly received by critics and spent four weeks on the New York Times best seller list, so naturally, somebody had to make a movie adaptation. After languishing in developmental hell for years and going through multiple rewrites before it finally entered production, World War Z is finally upon us. And to tell you the truth, it's a war that probably shouldn't have been fought.
Meet Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a former United Nations investigator who has retired from his job to spend more time with his family. Stuck in a seemingly innocuous traffic jam on the busy streets of Philadelphia, the Lanes soon find themselves fleeing for their lives when zombies swarm the streets. Their numbers growing with every person they attack and infect with the zombie virus, the Lanes narrowly escape thanks to an extraction helicopter sent by Gerry's former UN colleague Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena).
Finding a modicum of safety aboard a Navy vessel off the coast of New York, Gerry learns that millions around the globe have already been infected and that there is seemingly no way to stop the zombie plague. He finds himself called back into duty by his old UN bosses, tasked with shadowing a team of soldiers and medical staff as they locating a "patient zero" and the hope for a cure. Fearing that his family will be dumped at a refugee camp if he doesn't, Gerry reluctantly agrees and follows a haphazard trail of clues that lead him from South Korea to Jerusalem to Wales. But with every step he takes, an ever-growing zombie horde comes closer and closer to consuming the world.
I'm honestly not sure where I should begin with World War Z. The biggest problem with the movie is that it's just so boring and forgettable that by the end, all you're left with is a great big pile of disappointment. It's even worse once you consider that something good could have come out of the premise regardless of how they approached the source material. There are even some moments that actually work. But World War Z comes across as something that some filmmakers and a studio threw together before they lost the rights to the book. For shame, Hollywood.
The movie was directed by Mark Forster, who does a decent enough job at the helm. Some of the set pieces ― the initial chaos at the start of the movie, the Jerusalem siege, and the plane ride to Wales ― are all very well done. They're tense, exciting, and just plain cool. The bad part, however, is that the rest of the movie is so dull that I'm getting bored thinking about it. There are precious few scares, and Forster doesn't build quite the atmosphere that he probably could have. And outside of the occasional sequence like the ones I mentioned, it basically comes down to Brad Pitt looking at things, people running away from zombies, Brad Pitt talking to soldiers, an action sequence, Brad Pitt walks around, Brad Pitt calls his family, something happens briefly, and that's it. That's pretty much the whole thing. I have no problem with quiet moments in horror/action movies, but Forster doesn't do enough with them to make them anything other than boring. They drag the entire movie down with them. I'm just amazed that someone actually made a zombie movie that featured what looked like a tidal wave made out of zombies and it still ended up more boring than not.
I think a lot of it has to do with the number of times the script was rewritten. Credited to Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof from a story by Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski, the script suffers from a case of too many chefs in the kitchen. I understand why they would move away from the concept of the novel, because the only way to do a proper adaptation of it would be as a mockumentary. (Though in all truthfulness, a zombie movie done in the style of a Ken Burns documentary could have been cool.) But the movie as it's presented onscreen is basically a cross between disaster movies, zombie movies, and Contagion with a dash of I Am Legend thrown in for flavor. And had it been simply Contagion with zombies, World War Z could have awesome. But you've got so many writers putting their own spin on things that it waters the movie down and makes it a mess.
Even the movie's cast is forgettable. Nobody contributes anything memorable, with Brad Pitt being the only person who stands out simply because he's the only actor in the movie I've actually heard of. It's nowhere near Pitt's finest work, but that's because the character he plays is so ill-defined that they could have left him out o f the movie altogether and you'd probably never notice. And you probably would forget about the character if he weren't being played by an A-list mega-star. Pitt's trying his hardest, though, so I guess I can't fault him for that.
At least the movie's got some great 3D effects going for it. I don't know for sure whether the movie was converted into 3D during post production or shot in that format, but either way, it looks really good. The 3D helps give the feeling that you're at risk of being swallowed up by thousands of ravenous undead, that they're on all sides and they're after you. After seeing a few really lackluster 3D movies this summer, it's good to see one do it right.
It's just a shame that World War Z didn't get more than that right. I'm sure that Max Brooks isn't too upset with how it turned out, since the movie's release probably led to the World War Z novel and The Zombie Survival Guide selling a ton more copies and put some cash in his pockets. But it's just disappointing to see a movie with such promise fail to rise above mediocrity. And at this point, I think I'm pretty much over zombies. They've run themselves into the ground, and I'd like to see some other classic monster have the limelight for a little while. Zombies are old hat, the Twilight movies ruined vampires and werewolves for me... I've got it! We could use more Frankenstein movies! Get on that, Hollywood!
Final Rating: **½
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