Review: World War Z

Review: World War Z

Director: Marc Forster

Cast: Brad Pitt, James Badge Dale, Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox

Running Time: 116 Minutes

There's one thing that any zombie lover needs to understand about World War Z before heading into the cinema - this is NOT a horror movie. At best, World War Z is a teen-friendly disaster movie masquerading as a zombie story, perhaps due to the revived interest in the genre. You can either thank or blame the likes of The Walking Dead for that.

That's okay though; fans of the book World War Z, upon which this movie is very very loosely based, need to understand that its source material is barely represented here for better or for worse. Instead, we have leading man Brad Pitt facing against hordes of the surprisingly blood-free undead in an effort to put a halt to the end of humanity as we know it.

Philadelphia is wiped out in a matter of minutes. The President is dead. The mysterious virus responsible is transferring itself by taking over host after host - oh you get the idea. The word "zombie" is only uttered once in the entire film but we all know the story of how the virus works. Pitt is former UN worker Gerry Lane, now a family man but forced to return to the field after the pandemic leaves society in tatters in hours. Forced to abandon his wife and kids, Gerry travels the world in a desperate search for a cure.

Yes, the fate of the world lies in the hands of a man called Gerry. 

Luckily that's only one small underwhelming factor of World War Z. Sure, director Marc Forster's vision of the undead looks more like an angry crowd at a Saturday night football match, but there is some impressive visual effects work. The hordes of zombies overwhelming military barriers left, right and centre look phenomenally intimidating from a distance, particularly in one incredible sequence in Jerusalem. 

Where they fail to impress is in the close contact situations whereby, rather than dripping with the blood of their victims, they simply look a little more pale and angry, even comical at times. The 12A certificate sticks out a sore thumb and, had it been allowed to, World War Z could have been that bit more terrifying with the odd flash of gore here and there. There is the odd jump scare but anyone with their senses should feel them coming from miles away, and bullets enter walls rather than flesh with horror hinted at rather than shown. At one point a crowbar enters a zombie's head completely out of frame. Come on, Hollywood, we can handle it!

This is a Hollywood product though and as such it relies heavily on its star. Brad Pitt is, as always, a very capable leading man and guides us through the narrative with enough enthusiasm and desperation to keep us enthralled in his story. It's becoming increasingly difficult to believe that this is the same man who brought us the Irish boxer from Snatch.

At the other end of the spectrum, Peter Capaldi is given a welcome entrance towards the end, while Lost star Matthew Fox is unfortunately wasted in a laughably small cameo. Gerry's wife Karin's sole job within the narrative is to stare at her phone wistfully waiting for her husband to call. So much for a strong female lead. 

There are some incredibly nail-biting set pieces though, harking back to the likes of Danny Boyle's pivotal zombie horror 28 Days Later. One sequence aboard an aircraft is astoundingly tense, and while the climax itself is a little soft the events leading up to it (a desperate game of hide and seek within the walls of a research facility) are suitably atmospheric. Even the first five minutes send chills up the spine as an entire city (looking suspiciously like Glasgow) is swallowed up by the virus. 

Summary

The production horrors behind this film are known to most; various rewrites, re-shoots and firing of crew members ensured that the creation of World War Z could have been a disaster movie in itself. Luckily very little of it shows as, ultimately, World War Z is a welcome if watered down addition to the zombie genre on a global scale. Horror fans shouldn't expect buckets of gore and various aspects of the narrative fall down the usual genre clichés, but it's still a very enjoyable, tense and often affecting watch. Nice save, Brad.

8/10 - Great

See it if you liked: 28 Days Later (2002), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Zombieland (2009)