Enjoyable Zombie Romp

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2015)

Brad Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator who has been recruited by the government to try and find the source of a deadly virus which has been infecting mankind, turning them into vicious zombies.
The way this movie starts is excellent as it doesn't take long at all for all hell to start breaking loose. From that moment on it definitely keeps your attention. Sometimes the downside to movies starting off so well is that it set's a precedent for the rest of the movie to be as exciting, which is hard to do. Thankfully World War Z manages to keep a really good pace throughout, mixing a good amount of action and suspense, and while I understand it cannot be relentless for the entire movie duration, it does get a wee bit slow in places. Fortunately, these moments don't last too long though, and they are usually a build up to some good tense scenes.
A lot of the visuals are really superb, especially when you see the big wide shots of the zombie attacks in New York, New Jersey and Israel from the ground and from above. The tension that these scenes build are excellent as well, even moreso when the zombies actually start climbing over themselves to get over the walls in Israel.
Watching it all in action you can understand why the movie cost around $190m to make. Nothing is really original about the zombies in this movie in the way they act and the way they move - as 28 Days Later was the first movie to portray zombies/infected as fast, vicious killers - but they are still done really well with suspense being the main focus for them to scare people rather than a Dawn of the Dead type of zombie where it's mainly gore.
I had been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while and while overall I wasn't disappointed, it lacked a wee bit of something. Maybe it's because it's really all been done - PLENTY of times - before. Who knows, but what I do know is that World War Z is definitely a good film to watch.