If you are Making a Horror Movie, Don't Play it Safe

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2013)

When a movie is based on a book, a review can get caught up in comparing the book to the film. In this case, I listened to a good portion of the audio book. I could recognize, as with the majority of books, that it is not appropriate to compare two different forms of entertainment. A book can expand in situations that a movie has no time for. What a good screenplay can do, is flesh out some of the better characters, and inject them into the storyline somehow that works with the overall arc of the movie. This is true as our protagonist meets characters in South Korea and Israel. But the overall arc of the movie was not satisfying. The movie stayed too conventional, setting up the family, and making the film about getting safely back to the family. Important as this is, the detective work in tracing the source of a virus and solving the epidemic should also be given great weight in the story. Such is not the case in this film. It is, however, a successful achievement in how the story allows chaos to help dictate the direction. When things don't go as planned, then you prevent the audience from predicting the outcome, something we are starving for.
The final summary of this review is like so many other blockbusters recently.

Has the potential for being better, if better care was taken in putting the story together

The action scenes are great, but that alone does not make for a satisfying movie

Some plot holes we can live with, but giant plot holes make us feel cheated.

The most noticeable problem with this film, one big enough for me to not recommend this film, is the PG-13 instead of R rating for a horror movie. Worse, it seems obvious the movie could have been edited a lot scarier, but pulled it's punches at the moment of the big shock. Playing it too safe at every scary moment goes against the very point of the genre. With the moment of thrill being sanitised, you no longer have any expectation of being subjected to a scary film, and now just sit there as we miss all the good action off camera. Which takes us to the infamous third act. A great deal of publicity has been released about the reshoot of the third act, and the new ending feels tossed together at the last minute. At this point I was yawning and felt no scary thrills from our group of harmless zombies. There was a lot of laughter in the theatre throughout the supposed nail biting climax. And the homogenised storyline all but assured the telegraphed ending. So you have the conventional close to the film, but no. Sequel bait dictates that the story is not over, that all the efforts we have endured could be meaningless. This was an unsatisfying non-closure, and was ready for the credits to roll and head to the exit.
I recommend waiting for the DVD, enjoy the action setpieces, and lament at the much scarier film it could have been.