Noob horror, I guess.

Rating: 4/10 (25 June 2013)

What is this World War Z (or as we say in the UK Zed) thing all about then I hear you ask?
Brad Pitt is having a brilliant morning flipping pancakes and strapping his kiddywinkys into the obligatory ugly Volvo when all of a sudden, oh no! The smelly brown stuff hits the fan. Oh dear me the zombie apocalypse has broken out on the school run- I hate it when that happens! (if it's any consolation mate, I know how you feel). Next we learn he is not merely a lowly house-husband but a handsome UN special envoy type hero guy. Off he rushes to plonk his annoying squeaking females somewhere safe on a big boat thing so he can go and be awesome somewhere else. His boss insists he jaunts off round the world with a rubbish nerd and some thick soldiers to South Korea, Jerusalem and .er..Cardiff (which as we all know looks just the same when there is not a zombie apocalypse in full swing) on an epic journey to find a cure for the un-dead menace and of course save the world- as one does when not attending PTA meetings. What we are presented with is a sort of standard disaster/monster movie mash up. I am a horror addict and I would not call this horror, it isn't scary or disturbing at all, neither things are this movie's priority
Let's start with what is most important shall we? The zombies.
As a zom-oisseur I really must say these undead are pathetically tame. Not a lot of gut-munching goes on here I'm afraid people. Where is the blood? the goo? the gore? where are the entrails exactly? what on earth do these zombies eat? 'cos it sure as hell ain't anybody's spicy brains!
There is just something missing from them, they are neither Romero style zombies, or 28 Days 'Infected' but some sort of diluted take on one or both. These zombies are lacking personality I think there was really no importance placed them AT ALL by the director. BIG MISTAKE. A zombie movie will stand or fall based on the zombies, any true zombie fan knows this to be true, choose the right actors get the right effects and make them your own rather than a seething homogeneous mass as they seem to be in World War Z.
On to the rest, the performances here are middling, they are okay but what we horror fans hate is when actors do not take their roles in horror movies seriously. I am not saying a horror movie should be serious- even in a movie like Evil Dead which at not one single point any of three films takes itself seriously it is clear that the actors DO take their roles to heart and understand that horror is a difficult genre which demands effort in order to achieve a good outcome. It seems to me that the actors in this movie do not really seem to understand that they are trying to 'do' horror. They either think it is emotional drama, or action or a thriller. As an emotional drama this film also falls over, personally I couldn't care less what happened to the people in this film, the whole thing is poorly done.
This is supposed to be horror people! come on! Jump scares and CGI do not equal scary in any way you have to make us believe what you are selling to us.
So disappointingly here is yet another generic zombie apocalypse cash in movie, no more no less. World War Z is a zombie movie lite, it's not for hardcore zombie fans at all. If you want to see something better watch The Walking Dead. If you want to see something more classic go back to Romero or check out The Dead you might like that (a zombie survival film I really DID feel emotionally effected by)
World War Z film is really very generic Hollywood fare riddled with tacky product placement and not for horror aficionados. If you usually avoid decent horror movies you will probably get on okay with it though and think it is super-scary and amazables *facepalm*