Review – World War Z

Dyed-in-the-wool fans of the World War Z novel may leave the cinema scratching their heads, picking each others’ brains thinking, What the hell just happened?! Author Max Brooks has latched onto the boom in the zombie-merch market, penning a survival guide, graphic novel and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This film is an adaptation in name only, and one wonders if this now makes a true documentary-style version of WWZ less likely. There’s always a sequel, if the world lives long enough.

In a similar vein as the book, the film has an episodic way of unraveling the narrative. We follow Brad Pitt’s character Gerry Lane as he chases down a cure by tracing the outbreak to its roots. What unfolds is a series of case studies in what happens when our best laid plans go to blazes. From the trailer below, you’ll find snippets of such scenes, and you’ll surely recognise the clichés lifted from every zombie flick ever made. Maybe this was the point: to include all of them in one single movie. History may not remember this as the best of all zombie movies, or even the most definitive, but few other contenders would tick as many of the expected boxes.

The climax of the film is oddly slow, as Gerry (Brad) negotiates a puzzling maze of pass-coded doors, and halls of wandering undead, through a medical laboratory. If this otherwise workable film is going to lose you, it will lose you here. Some in the audience snickered at seeing “stupid zombies” stuck in a logic loop, laughing over the film’s explanation that without mental stimulus the infected grow increasingly dumb. And if that’s not enough to turn you off, the frequent cuts to a supporting cast cheering Gerry on, from behind a CCTV monitor, probably will. That, or the heavy-handed cola product placement. But wherever the inevitable rolling of your eyes occurs, remember that despite how it all went so weird in The End, you’ve just watched a nail-biting, perfectly plausible portrayal of The Ultimate Outbreak. World War Z may not be the Magnum Opus of the zombie genre that it is spawned from, but it has everything a good zombie movie should. And that is more than can be said for most.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKL2qEj47Y&w]