What's in a name?

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2013)

It's often futile to compare a movie to its source material, especially if the movie is loosely based or just inspired by it. However, the case with Word War Z makes me wonder. Who is the intended audience for World War Z? In all aspects it's an OK zombie flick, a genre ridden with mediocrity. There are jarring plot holes and inconsistencies but not worse than in other similar movies. After all, this is a big budget movie made for a broad audience and that is perhaps the first problem. Is it even possible to make an involving zombie movie with PG-13? The effects are well done but there is no blood and it's not especially scary in comparison. The beginning of the movie is really good. Small hints of a catastrophe are looming in the background throughout the introduction. The audience just waits for the sh*t to hit the fan and with casualties in the billions it sure does, and quick. The organic blob-like waves of attacking zombies as seen in the trailers is a "fresh" new take to the genre. Things take a turn for the dumb quite quickly. There are too many "really?!?" moment, like "did they really survive that?" Make no mistake; this is a movie about Brad Pitt with a few extras on the side. Expect no intricate character portraits. This might be surprising since the book had no protagonist whatsoever. Yes, the book. If you have read the book and liked it odds are you will be disappointed. WWZ is one of the few books that addressed the issues of what the real result of a viral zombie outbreak and its long lasting effects would be. It's obvious that the author Max Brooks was (perhaps a bit too) obsessed with the idea. If you are kind you might say that the movie is set in the same universe as the book but even that is stretching it too far. The book is a well reasoned exercise in different aspect of cause and consequence in the face of an inhuman catastrophe. The movie is without spoiling too much, everything but that. Now, if you are going to throw the basic premise of a book out the window you are bound to alienate a big part of the audience, but why when call it "Word War Z"? "I am legend" made the same mistake. This is a generic zombie movie and I tried to watch it as such, but it's hard to disregard the title. Now if you like Brad Pitt, please try to watch him best a zombie apocalypse without thinking too much about that book, OK?