This hilarity was based on a book? Perhaps a comic-book.

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2014)

It's the 21st century. Hollywood has devolved, regressed, dumbed-down: serial-killers have become superhuman in strength, knowledge, and cunning (a trend started with "Copycat" and other such moronic 90s flicks); skinny effeminate nerds (Di Crapio, Gyllenhaal, Brody) impersonate tough guys; women with no breasts, ugly faces, 8 feet tall, and with wiry arms and legs are proclaimed as beauties in the corrupt media and cast as "beauties"; zombies are no longer slow and dim-witted but fast, intelligent and occasionally even behave like outer-space termites who spontaneously build sky-high flesh-ladders that cover entire Israeli walls. (But only if some Arab girl grabs a mike and starts singing into it badly.)
Yes, once upon a time Tinseltown serial-killers were mere humans. Not anymore; as mentally ill Hollywood executives pushed for new dumb shticks to attract the increasingly dumbed-down movie-goers with, they hired writers whom they started giving explicit instructions to exaggerate, ignore all logic, exaggerate, ignore all logic, and then some. Ditto zombie films; once slow and pathetic – even comical pushovers – zombies are now faster than Usain Bolt on his best Jamaican juice concoction. Their energy levels never dissipate thereby breaking the unbreakable Laws of Thermodynamics. They eat and drink nothing (unlike traditional zombies who are simply hungry) but attack only so they can infect humans. (Huh?) It's a sad state of affairs, this need to make everything more extreme, more exaggerated – hence unavoidably more stupid.
I am sure some former East German dope-doctors are watching this movie from their jail-cells and secret labs, going all "wow" and "ooh" and "aah" as they watch Brad Pitt get smothered by zombies so fast that they could easily outrun a cheetah or an antelope in their prime. They probably wish they had some of that juice right now for Usain Bolt, who is wondering what new drugs these modern sports-performance mengheles are working on for him, now that he is approaching his 30s hence not quite able to run the doped-up 9-second 100 meter sprint anymore.
WWZ is beyond dumb. Let me explain why. It sets itself up not as a run-of-the-mill cheesy zombie flick that is hence beyond (much) criticism. No. It sets itself up as if it were based in some kind of a reality similar to ours, hence the movie is fair game when it comes to nit-picking for logic flaws. And nonsense there is aplenty.
We have a "virus" that COMPLETELY – physically and mentally – transforms its victim into what is essentially an alien being within mere seconds. Dumber still, this new creature is MUCH faster than the body's previous host (how? Why?); it's impervious to pain; it's in a perpetual state of frenzy (yet somehow strategically aware and with a cunning nature); even the good old-fashioned shot in the head isn't enough anymore to immediately kill it. I was half-expecting the bloody things to grow wings and fly at super-sonic speeds, or to grow fangs a meter long from whose tips poisonous snake venom would drip.
But that's probably planned for the sequel. Coming to a cinema near you, soon: "World War Z II: Zombies Grow Wings & Fly Like Military Jets While Spewing Fire Out Of Their Mouths Very Godzilla-Like". Don't be so sure that I'm exaggerating. What was once considered too absurd to be even in a horror movie is nowadays part-and-parcel of nearly every action or thriller flick.
Basically, the set-up is a rather straight-forward zero-chance-for-humanity affair, i.e. the ENTIRE world is royally screwed and nearly everyone should be infected within a few days. And yet, we have all these inexplicable survivors, people who managed to escape from ant-like hordes of super-power zombies. How is that possible? The simple answer: any nonsense is possible in a 21st-century Tinseltown big-budget turkey. Literally anything. Imagine facing an enemy consisting of thousands of invincible raving lunatics charging at you all at once, never tiring, and never resting. Chances? Nil. And yet, somehow, Brad Pitt not only escapes them over and over, he even survives a plane crash.
Yes, that plane-crash outcome was beyond cretinous. How are the writers of this unintentional comedy able to look themselves in their gold-plated Beverly Hills mirrors? "Yes, I wrote a scene in which the only two survivors of a plane crash are the two main characters – the only relevant characters in that entire airplane. Are movie-goers dumb enough for such a plot-twist? Sure they are." And they are right. 90% of today's movie-goers are brainwashed, awe-struck morons; sheep ready to watch and enjoy any movie, no matter how dumb. Hollywood suits wouldn't finance these kinds of silly turds if there weren't millions of zombies waiting in line to watch these zombie films, ready to digest the plots without throwing up laughing. When you have no more brain-cells to lose, you become a willing zombie slave to the powerful media-hype giant that is Hollywood.
I did snicker a bit when I found out that Pitt plays some kind of a UN hotshot. Ironically, his anorexic wife and fellow kid-collector Angelina Jolie is associated with that fine, useless organization in real life. Angelina working for the UN is admittedly a lot more preposterous than Pitt working for them, which goes to show that sometimes truth is dumber than fiction – even Hollywood fiction.
The highlight is Pitt's "solution": infect people with major diseases so that the zombies will avoid tearing them into bits. Wow. Monty Python could not have thought up a dumber punchline.
More poor writing reared its stupid head when Pitt finds himself in the Welsh medical research center, creating forced "cinematic tension" by being illogical and not telling the personnel straight away who he is. That's 5 minutes of the movie they could saved themselves – and the viewers.
That whole shtick with zombies reacting only to noise was pretty daft, as well.