This movie needed Abbott and Costello or The Three Stooges.

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2013)

There are two types of movies: those with strong endings and those with weak endings. This movie is in the latter category. The movie starts strongly, presenting an apocalyptic picture of humanity in crisis. The cause of the problem - a disease - seems intractable and how it impacts on humans most alarming. Then the story loses steam and what has been scary becomes laughable, and the movie soon devolves into an unintended comedy. One problem is that the mysterious disease itself is too en debilitating to transform its victims into ogres. Their jerky motions and emaciated bodies create an image of illness, not horror, and soon the movie seems to be spoofing illness. After a while, the movie takes on the mantra of slapstick comedy as the people are running around frantically, going hither and yon, making lots of noise and accomplishing nothing. In some scenes, this movie more resembles a Mac Sennett production. People, some dead, others alive, colliding into one another, making all kinds of noises and gesticulations. At that point, the presence of Buster Keaton would have helped. Instead, the audience gets Brad Pitt whose character is grimly determined to set things right, and his solution is ... well, let's just say it is a novel one, even for Hollywood. The scary people, or rather non-people, after a while lose whatever scariness they project as they demonstrate a talent for dancing a jig, which one could call The Twitch, and producing an interesting array of sounds denoting an acoustical form of communication akin to that of whales. They also have protruding teeth which may offend people with dental problems, especially those with upper-bite issues. Introduce Abbott and Costello into the story and you have an amusing comedy; with the Three Stooges a comedy classic.