If you've ever played the game 'plague' on your phone, just imagine that combined with black ops zombies and -TADA!- you have World War Z. This is not necessarily a bad combination. WWZ is a behemoth action extravaganza which will command attention amidst other summer blockbusters, overpowering them with its brazen billiondollar-ness. Brad Pitt's love-child, the scale of this thing is formidable, but it is nothing new.
Although you could have guessed it, WWZ is all about poor Brad Pitt trying to save the world from the dreaded zombie. He must travel to the furthest reaches of the globe (including the forbidden, treacherous and enigmatic land of Wales) to Save the Day and get back to his family. What a bleeding hero.
I mentioned Black Ops, because I found WWZ, unlike the book (although I could start every sentence of this review with that phrase) awkwardly patriotic. At times it gets a little cheesy, with the US Army constantly saving the day. A scene when Brad Pitt is being escorted by a swat team to an aeroplane is a lot like COD with the use of headsets, the xbox shots and general mise-en-scene. The ending was actually rewritten and re-shot and this stunted structure is evident. Reminiscent of Any Action Film in The Eighties or Nineties, Brad Pitt walks solo down a corridor to save the day. It's so cringey I half expected the American National Anthem to start blasting into the cinema. The closing sequences attempt to moralise the situation because there of course has to be a message, and that is okay, it's just that it's done pretty poorly here.
I know this is a small point but I found the family pretty annoying, unbearable and frankly unpatriotic at times. Brad's kids were having inconvenient asthma attacks the whole time, undoing their seatbelts in a speeding car to dive (FOR A BLANKET might I add) at the floor and thus cause Pitt to crash, not to mention the wife phoning up for a natter when it is paramount Jerry remains silent else he be attacked by Zombies. Come on guys, where's the do-it-for America spirit here? Be obedient for your country, god damn it. I felt like they all needed a good slap in the face from Ron Weasley, followed by a lecture on sorting out their priorities. Honestly, if those eleven year olds had their shit together in Hogwarts battling an evil wizard, you can too.
On the bright side WWZ occasionally counters these shortcomings. While gore is subdued for the much debated audience-enhancing PG-13, terror takes centre stage here. The use of 3D is genuinely justified and effective, taken full advantage of in jumpy moments and sensationally vivid in sequences such as the memorable zombie-wall-climbing scene. Rabid editing and frenzied handheld dizzies and captivates (although you might wonder if a zombie had stolen the camera) whilst celebrating the notion that no scene is shot more epically than with a helicopter shot, and by that thesis WWZ sticks heavily to.
Director Mark Foster capitalizes on the vibe which infuses End of the World flicks 28 Days Later and I am Legend. Yes, these films are infinitely superior, but the running zombie/rabid human antagonist is present here. Zombie purists (like Max Brooks, the guy whose book this is based on...oops) maintain that they cannot and must not be able to run. However this skill surely gives an added sense of terror to Z... what could be worse than a man-eating human which walks slowly but cannot die? Um, one which sprints. This addition creates a dimension of threat unlike the dominating force of the zombie-genre The Walking Dead, which is perhaps why they deviated from the book in this sense. Chases and mass-attacks are all the more exhilarating with the insectile, running zombie, making up for a lack of physical horror.
World War Z is a blundering yet impressive rollercoaster of a film, with all the visuals, immediacy and sensation to incite an adrenaline rush. You will enjoy this film, probably look over your shoulder a lot more after your viewing, but you'll have forgotten it by next year.
