The world is a horrible place full of weird hotspots like Korea and Israel where bad stuff happens that we don’t really understand. Bad stuff like wars and humanitarian disasters and zombie epidemics. But we don’t need to worry about that because Brad Pitt (who looks like Jesus) is going to figure it out, stop it happening and then we can all get on with our lives.
Fortunately World War Z isn’t too bothered by subtext any more than it’s bothered by using it’s literary source material. It’s a big fuck off zombie and it knows it. What we we have is set piece after set piece and the ace up it’s sleeve is a money shot of hoards of zombies coming at ya. There’s thousands of them and these aren’t your shambling cadavers, these are your 28 Days Later zombies on red bull.
It’s tense, it’s frightening to think about and it’s awesome to look at. Think Cecil B DeMille rather than George Romero.
It focuses too much on Brad’s wife and kids. I don’t care about Brad’s wife and kids and they’re only in the movie to show that Brad has personal responsibilities. The wife could have been much better used if she had some skills or was an equal to Brad as a scientist or reporter working on the problem from a different angle in another part of the world. But no, she’s there to give him a bit of a nagging, slow him down when they’re raiding the supermarket and basically just cause him problems. The wife and kids get to stay on an aircraft carrier which is pretty cool but it doesn’t take long before the military figure out that they’re a waste of space and want them off the boat. Like I say, nothing but problems.
Meanwhile, Brad flies all the way to South Korea just so that he can touch down and run away from zombies. This bit is like an action movie. Then we see him lobbing grenades in Jerusalem at all these zombie intruders breaching the walls. This bit is like a war movie with suspect politics. Then he gets on a plane…but…get this…there’s zombies on the plane! So this bit is like a disaster movie.
The final act is a bit weird. After all this epic globetrotting activity we end up in a World Health research laboratory in Cardiff. Yes, Cardiff. You see Brad has figured out that zombies aren’t too keen on munching on people who already have terminal illness. I’m not sure why he had to go round the world to figure this out when surely a visit to any hospital would have revealed the same thing, but then I’m not a UN advisor like Brad.
So it scales stuff down for the finale - just Brad, a handful of zombies and some vials of terminal illness that need to get from point A to point B. This bit isn’t quite as nerve wracking as it should be because we know Brad’s going to make it. He’s Brad Pitt.
Any great zombie movie needs a dark ending. This is not that movie. This is a massive budget Brad Pitt movie so we get a dumb “This isn’t the end. Not even close." message. They should have just ended with his wife and kids getting eaten. Something bleak like that. Something horrible. But no, it’s clear that we’ve been building towards a damp squib of an ending.
Another disappointing blockbuster.
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