Played safe to the point of being incredibly dull

Rating: 3/10 (29 June 2013)

I need to get two things straight right up front here. The first is that although I loved the book, I have no qualms with a movie that diverges completely from the source material. The second is that I have nothing at all against PG-13 horror movies. While I see countless fellow horror fans complaining about PG-13s, some of my favorite (and personally most terrifying) horror movies have had that rating (The Others, The Ring, Skeleton Key, Jaws etc.)
I went into WWZ knowing it diverged from the book vastly and not caring if it was PG 13, all I wanted was some half decent entertainment. Unfortunately, this film played it so safe that it was terminally dull - and I don't mean in terms of having no gore, I mean in terms of not being willing to take one single risk in the script. There's simply *nothing* here that wasn't, at best, obvious; or, at worst, dumb.
It's one of those films where you figure out what the protagonist has to figure out looooong before he does so, then spend the rest of the film clock watching and waiting for him to have the a-ha moment. Sometimes those kind of films can be saved by fascinating character arcs, or perhaps by some interesting cinematography or direction or even by a rousing score, but again WWZ plays it horribly safe in all those aspects too. Not one moment of the music will stay in your head, not one shot will make you think "nicely framed", not one character will have you saying "I didn't know they were going to say that".
I can only imagine the things that went on behind the scenes to make this so horribly mundane. I suspect it involved a great deal of high level pressure to make it inoffensive enough to market to teenagers. But here's the thing - the very subject matter of the dead returning to life requires, nay *demands*, boldness - not necessarily gore or violence, but at the very least BOLDNESS - yet WWZ is as meek as a movie can get. You could show it to your Grandmother over tea and biscuits and she'd probably be just as bored as you would and forget everything that happened just as fast.
I'm a big fan of Pitt. Usually he has the intensity to pull even a weak movie up to higher levels - but not so here. His character is the safest of the bunch, a doting dad with nary a flaw in sight. He wanders, set-jawed and honorable, from location to location without his character experiencing a single moment of intensity, internal conflict, or weakness.
WWZ is a beige wall, it's a light gray cardigan, it's a glass of room temperature water, it's a placebo sugar pill. It won't offend you, excite you, upset you, fascinate you, thrill you or scare you in any way. It will enter your system and leave without trace or effect.