Movie Bad. Book Good.

Rating: 1/10 (18 October 2018)

Brief Note: I'm unsure of whether what I'll type is actually spoiler-y or not, so I've erred on the side of caution and tagged it as such.
Let me just preface this by saying that this is the first and only time I've ever been so angry at a film that I've actually committed to writing a review. Yes, I know, it came out in 2013. Since then there have been plenty of other anger inducing movies, but this one... This one is special. I was first introduced to World War Z, as many were, through the book. I bought it at an airport when my flight was delayed, and it is what got me interested in story telling and writing.
Needless to say, this movie is nothing like the book, except perhaps in name. The characters are flat, practically interchangeable, and boring. Not once do I feel any sympathy for them, in fact most of the time I find myself rooting for the zombies to kill those fools so the movie could be over.
Now, I'm sure Brad Pit is a decent guy and he's done some good films, but choosing him to play a 'UN Analyst' or whatever the hell it was called is a bit like choosing Arnold Schwarzenegger to play a speech therapist. He doesn't seem like the type of person to fit that role, even if he is retired as stated in the film. His children were also quite annoying, not to mention his wife. Perhaps the most glaring bit of Brad's 'Character' is he is possibly the dumbest person on the face of the freaking planet.
On one occasion he and his team are attempting to sneak off of a Korean Air Base, and what does he do? Leave's his freaking phone on. Needless to say, pretty much all their guys end up getting eaten or killed because his wife calls him and the Zombies hear it go off... I was reminded starkly of a scene from an equally poor film called Jurassic Park Three, if you're at all familiar with that film you'll know why.
The plot is winding and incredibly convenient, and at times the CGI feels more like a poorly rendered cutscene from a game than anything of actual substance. Brad and his family need to get out of town? Well, lucky them there just happens to be a helicopter to pick them up.
Brad needs to get from Korea to Israel? Lucky lucky, his C-130 which only was being fueled for a matter of seconds somehow has enough fuel to make it there without losing all power and crashing in the middle of nowhere!
Brad and his Israeli lady friend need to get out of Israel? Bam! Commercial jet lets them on through a magical CG ladder and then conveniently crashes right near a freaking laboratory with everything and everyone they need to make the people in Hollywood have their stupid happy ending!
The only character I liked in this film was the Israeli soldier woman, and I barely was able to catch her name. She had real consequences happen to her, she lost a freakin' arm! Why couldn't we watch her instead of Brad Pitt's wooden performance? Watching her cope with the loss of her hand, the loss of her homeland, and all the emotions that follow such a loss...
This all brings me to my final point, the thing about this movie that turned my rage dial so high that I felt had to voice my contempt for this travesty of a film.
Wasted potential.
There was so much wasted potential here, and making a movie faithful to the book would've been such a breath of fresh air instead of making yet another stupid and unthinking Blockbuster Action Movie cash grab. The movie could practically write itself.
In the book the zombies were walkers like the Romero films, none of that sprinting zombie stuff. There's a point where in the book where they say you could 'Speed Walk' away from them if you couldn't run. Seeing things like that... Seeing that there were ways to fight the monsters, even ones as mundane as speed walking, would've been something new and unique.
I feel like the film would have been better served as a faux documentary of sorts, staying true to the 'An Oral History of the Zombie War' tagline of the book. They could've pulled directly from sections of the book for narration, film the attacks as dramatizations or 'Combat Footage'... I mean, for crying out loud there's a part in the book where a guy in japan has to escape his apartment by tying bed sheets together and climbing down balcony after balcony. That would've been such a tense scene!
In conclusion, this film was such a waste of potential, and I'm sad that it turned out this way because now we'll never get a faithful adaptation. Barring some sort of miracle director coming in to save the film, it's likely the only way you'll get a true feeling for what the book is actually like is to read it yourself. I thoroughly recommend you do.