Review: World War Z

Plot:  When a sudden viral outbreak turns billions worldwide into crazed zombies, cities are abandoned, governments fall, and the populace panics.  Enter former UN employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt).  After Gerry, his wife Karin (Mireille Enos), and their two daughters are saved in a miraculous rooftop rescue, Gerry is tasked by the U.S. military and UN Deputy-Secretary General Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) to assist in finding a cure for the disease.  On a journey that ranges from South Korea to Israel to Great Britain, Gerry races to find a cure for the virus and save his family before it's too late.

Review:  Going into World War Z I had already resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to be like Max Brooks's 2006 novel of the same name.  Other than doing a faux documentary ala District 9, there's really no way to capture the essence of the novel.  I was also weary of the feuding between Pitt and director Marc Forster as well as the re-shoots done last fall to revise the third act.  Despite this I was intrigued at seeing a zombie plague depicted on a global level.  I went in hoping at the least for a good zombie horror film. 

Sadly it was not be as World War Z isn't even a mediocre zombie film.  WWZ would have to bypass a couple levels just to get to mediocre.

Bland, boring, derivative, and painfully unscary, WWZ is a colossal disappointment and fails miserably to captivate the viewer.  Director Marc Forster's pacing is atrocious.  WWZ goes from sharp spikes of action to moments of dull flat-lined scenes of Brad Pitt looking worried or military personnel looking serious.  There is no real cohesive flow to the film.  It's sad that the director of Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner could do such a monumentally pathetic job on this movie.  Time and again Forster fails to convey any sense of real tension or fear throughout the movie, which is kind of essential for the zombie genre.

To be fair to Forster he didn't get much help from the screenwriters as Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof's script falls flatter than a zombie from a rooftop.  The dialogue is shoddy and awkward and the suspense non-existent.  Even the zombies are derivative of Danny Boyle's fantastic 28 Days Later.  In fact it is almost as if they ripped these particular zombies right from that movie.  Additionally, one plot point in particular strained credibility to the breaking point.  In response to a tip about the zombie plague, Jerusalem builds a giant metal wall 100 feet tall around the entire city--in one week.  I'm sorry, even for a zombie film that is hard to swallow.  And the third act is just painful to watch.  For the last thirty minutes of the film--which involves Gerry trying to prove his theory that the zombies will avoid ill people--I was wishing for my pillow.  Dreaming about zombies would have been exponentially scarier than the film in front of me.

WWZ did sport a few gripping action sequences such as Gerry's family's daring helicopter escape and the invasion of Jerusalem by zombies.  However WWZ also relied way to much on CGI, CGI that made some of the scenes in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter look like Jurassic Park by comparison.  Ben Seresin's cinematography was solid as he did a good job capturing Jerusalem, Wales, and Philadelphia with a certain amount of majesty.

Too bad the acting wasn't as good as the cinematography.  Pitt's Gerry comes off bland and inspires no sympathy.  Enos's Karin is one dimensional and pushed to the background as Gerry's wife.  And for some reason Matthew Fox appears in this film as a special forces soldier.  His character is so important he doesn't even get a name or much screen time to match it.   Too bad because WWZ could have used Fox's acting abilities.  In point of fact he might have been more suited to the Gerry role than Pitt.

WWZ is a sad attempt at a zombie film that made me long for October when AMC's "The Walking Dead" returns.  Never has a race to save humanity felt so ponderous or boring.

My review:  3/10