Disappointing but not terrible

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2013)

World War Z has been talked about in critics' circles for over a year now; it was widely publicised that the project went through development hell, there were several re-writes and re-shoots of the ending. All of this, plus the fact that it was given a mere 15 age rating, meant that most zombie horror fans and fans of the book were worried.
Max Brooks' novel is in a format that would be almost impossible to convert into a faithful film adaptation. It was always going to be tough but World War Z is an adaptation in name only; there is hardly anything derived from the book included here with exception to some film locations and the decision to just call the zombies 'zombies' rather than walkers, biters or any other name that films and TV shows have done. The political satire has been left out (it is hinted that the virus began in South Korea rather than in China) and the film takes place at the beginning of the war rather than ten years after it. These decisions have been made with the best intentions, to make the film more entertaining. This is a good idea but, as with any book adaptation, it will anger fans of the source material. The movie chose to jump right into the chaos so there was no suspicious news reports of riots in distant towns, and Brad Pitt and his family were completely surprised when they found ordinary people trying to have a chomp at them.
The fact that World War Z is not an 18 is a very poor studio decision; the main terrifying feature of a zombie is their ability to tear people to shreds, the result of this would obviously be a lot of blood and gore. There are several scenes of people being bitten, people being shot and even one scene where someone has their hand amputated to prevent the spread of infection – none of these scenes contain a drop of blood. Luckily, the zombies are still quite creepy; the sound of their teeth snapping at people is really unsettling and the way they twitch is just ghastly. These are seen in the final act, which is where you get a chance to properly look at the zombies. Before this, all action scenes are either in the dark or are so fast paced and quickly edited that you have no idea what is going on. The first action scene will remind people of director Marc Forster's previous editing misadventure – Quantum of Solace.
The opening act began quite well; Brad Pitt has shown he is great at playing the average family man – he and Mireille Enos build up a believable family setting. A not-so-wise decision was made to make their children behave significantly younger that their actual ages – they look about 13 and nine but both act about four years old! Brad Pitt's performance becomes more and more laborious and doesn't quite look as effortless as it did in the beginning. It is actually quite surprising to see him act in a film that you can tell he just doesn't care about any more – you can tell that in some scenes these were filmed just as the production was running into problems.
The supporting characters were all very disappointing; there were some fairly big actors who got hardly any screen time and their characters were severely under-developed. James Badge Dale makes an appearance for five minutes and in that tiny amount of time we are supposed to care about him and what happens to him, this was impossible. Even the brilliant Peter Capaldi features but his talent is wasted on a basic character that is not even given a name!
Aside from this, most of the action was well-paced but the computer generated zombies make the massive action scenes less realistic and therefore less scary. There are some genuinely tense moments that make you want to hide behind your chair – the plane scene is definitely where the film peaks.
The film gets better as it continues but the ending is very deflating; there is a 15-minute long tense sequence where people are sneaking around an abandoned laboratory which is teaming with 'dormant' zombies. All of this leads up to the controversial decision to introduce a solution to the zombie apocalypse (one of the horrifying aspects of the book was that there was no real solution apart from building bigger forts and killing the infected one by one). When Brad Pitt makes this discovery, the film ends after a few minutes of cheesy family reunion with 'our war has just begun.' This is sadly nothing more than a reason to create a sequel and you are left at the end thinking 'is that it?'
Overall, World War Z was the best possible zombie movie you could make with such a low age rating. It was fast paced, tense, thrilling and riddled with jump scares. Brad Pitt starts out promisingly but his performance becomes more tiresome as the film goes on. The film is not very recommendable, simply because the ending is so lazy it ruins the little sparks of talent that it had.