So much better than most zombie films, but still only average.

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2013)

There are some things that you get to feel in your bones after watching a lot of movies, one of those feelings that something is wrong at places. I have not read the book the film is based on, but I was having these spider-sense tinglings that some scenes could not have been in the book.
Also, the plot reminded me too much of a book I hated with all my heart: The Passage, by Justin Cronin. It starts with character building scenes mingled smartly with action and suspense, than Blam! Reset! A lot of crafty special effects follow that last more than the character building scenes, then there are no characters left. All but the main character get to move to the next stage. Then it starts all over again. It does this at least three times. It gets old and annoying.
You have to see this from my perspective: I've watched movies like 28 Hours Later, where complex characters and spooky music create a truly horrorful atmosphere. I've seen things like Night of the Living Dead, filled with social commentary that made the film interesting beside the moving corpses. I have seen films that use plot devices like crammed spaces to build up what they can't possibly build with their allotted budget. The problem with World War Z is that is it perfectly made, tons of special effects, many locations, scary running zombies (in hordes!), but the story is the same lame "lone hero does all the work and saves the day". In 3D, no less!
This can be felt painfully in the last scenes, when really well known and good British and German and Italian actors play secondary roles that anyone could have played. It was like a weird twist on the Statue of Liberty text: give us your best and we'll give them mediocre roles, because we have the budget.
Bottom line: so much better than most zombie films, but still only average. I know it seems contradictory, but that's how I feel about it. I will read the book only to see if I was right feeling that all those extra scenes were off somehow.