Gets by on CGI

Rating: 5/10 (21 September 2013)

I put off watching this for quite some time, after hearing mostly bad things about it from friends and relatives. Still, it's not unusual for me to disagree completely with what my friends think, so I decided to give it a shot. This was not one of those movies.
I should mention upfront that I have not read the source material for this, and came into it with zero expectations. With that said, this movie is not exactly good advertising for the book. It consistently failed to impress me and I found myself pretty bored after about an hour of watching. Sure, the CGI was so well done that I for the most part didn't mind the fact that many of the zombies were animated in, and there was plenty of action to at least keep you from falling asleep.
No, what bothered me the most was the entire idea that some retired investigator would be the trump card for the UN in a disaster such as this. That they were willing to send their absolutely most important person to a zombie-infested area along with a handful of soldiers and this one investigator, as if the character played by Brad Pitt was some superhuman? I don't get it, and it annoyed me all throughout the movie.
Please, please stop making the characters in movies where suspense is so prominent constantly kick over bottles, touch a fence, or make any other noise by accident? I understand that the zombies reacted to sound, something that you were constantly reminded of, but it's not exactly good when you have to make every action-filled sequence start with someone accidentally make a noise. And then suddenly, on the airplane, the zombie makes zero ruckus till the elevator is brought up, in spite of being ON A NOISY PLANE.
This is in no way comparable to the classic idea of zombie movies. Going for a PG-13 rating was probably the worst decision made. Zombie flicks have always had a fairly heavy focus on gore, blood, and the absolute terror caused by the walking dead. The closest you'd get in this film would be CGI blood, and that was probably the only part where the CGI really didn't work out for me.
When I heard the title I expected much much more. I expected more than just a single man travelling from country to country in search of a cure. I expected a war, not people hiding in cramped settlements, trying to stay away from rather than battle the zombie "invasion". Overall, it was extremely underwhelming compared to what the trailers and teasers and title made me expect.