WORLD WAR Z

WORLD WAR Z  is too little too late.  Our culture is over saturated with zombies. They're everywhere nowadays it seems; video games, movies, books, and television.  What once was a sub-genre in horror beloved by cinephiles has now become low hanging fruit in our pop culture obsessed society.  Every once in awhile something fresh like ZOMBIELAND or THE WALKING DEAD comes along and keeps the sub-genre interesting, sadly WORLD WAR Z does not.

When a studio wants a movie dealing with the zombie apocalypse and makes it PG-13, then your movie has failed.  Who is the audience for a PG-13 zombie movie anyway?  Any 12 year old can turn on the television and watch THE WALKING DEAD or play the latest DEAD ISLAND video game and get a better zombie movie experience.  That being said, WORLD WAR Z is not a bad movie just not a very effective "zombie" one.

Brad Pitt plays Gerry a retired UN investigator who now spends most of his days making pancakes for his two young daughters. On a day just like any other day Mr. Mom is taking the kids to school or his wife to work, I must of missed where they were going? Gerry and his family get stuck in a traffic jam and it is around this time that the zombie apocalypse begins. Trying not to panic Gerry uses his former job skills to lead him and his family to safety. During which he is assessing the chaos going on trying to deduct just what is going on.

He witnesses mass hysteria and people turning into rabid savages. The first moment out of harms way he uses a cell phone and calls his old boss to find out what is happening. They formulate a plan of extraction to evacuate the city. The UN tell Gerry all that they know up to this point and how it is up to him to help find out if there could be a cure to this “zombie apocalypse”. With the promise of his families safety Gerry agrees to globe trot around the world in search of answers and ultimately a cure.

My favorite thing about WORLD WAR Z was that it ended up not being the prequel to 2007's I AM LEGEND. Just kidding. What I really did like was the chaos our main character was constantly thrown into with following the “breadcrumbs” of the zombie virus. The film took a few clever turns always keeping Gerry on his toes. This made for a consistently entertaining action thriller. Director Marc Forester makes up for the lack of blood and gore with strong scenes of tension. The tone of WORLD WAR Z is very R rated but with little to no blood and zero gore the movie has been resorted to something akin to a Roland Emmerich film.

Time to cut the zombies some slack. I really liked the hive mentality of the zombies and in lieu of an appetite for brains the bite and infect method worked for me in the confines of the film. And concerning the hoards of CGI zombies climbing up buildings and going over walls did in fact look terrible in all of the trailers but did not bother me all that much when seeing it in context.

WORLD WAR Z did not turn out to be the train wreak that I was expecting. Bland trailers and word that the film was just not coming together made me think WORLD WAR Z might be an awesomely so-bad-it's good movie rather than a boringly bad one. Producer and star Brad Pitt gathered the troops to try and save what was at one time a disaster of a movie. Rewrites and something like the last 40 minutes of the film redone. If the original footage ends up on the blu-ray it might make for a pretty fun bad movie night.

A decent action thriller I recommend to the summer movie crowd. If it's zombie horror you are expecting then steer clear.