Excellent adaptation of a great book; different but complimentary

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2014)

This is a really tense film, exciting and visceral. It engages from minute one and keeps you tightly bound until the end. The premise is simple; zombies have spread wildly and are taking over the planet. Nowhere seems safe, and unlike "traditional" zombies, these are fast and the turn around from bite to zombie is twelve seconds so infestation of an area is exponentially fast.
Brad Pitt is believable as the ex-UN worker, who gets called up to help out, he's convincing as a man who's seen action in the field and picked up a thing or two, and is fit and able to run around and take care of himself and his family. He played the action guy but also the guy who is worried about his family, and those he's in a team with sensibly. The "solution" isn't stupidly come across, by a leap or intuition, or without realistic casualties. It doesn't keep close to the book at all, but has taken the spirit of the story and made a huge film out of it. It was a massive scale film, with epic CGI vistas of zombies taking down whole cities - and the SFX of the film, the zombies themselves are brilliant. Everyone in the film acted it very real, and you hope against hope that there is a solution but you have no clue what it could possibly be.
There are flaws in the logic of the film, and much is left unexplained, which is annoying, but it doesn't really detract from the film experience, which is a spectacle to be sure. I don't get the 'fast zombie' thing but in this genre-version it seemed to work. The end of the film left an opening for future films without being too obviously cliff-hangerish and I was pleased how international it was and wasn't too flag-waving American. Overall a great film, very entertaining.