World War Z Ain’t No Picnic

Directed by Marc Forster

Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof

Starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Daniella Kertesz, Fana Mokoena and David Morse

PG-13, 116 minutes

I had a conversation with someone once who claimed the zombie narrative was dead despite its current re-emergence into the pop culture lexicon. Sure, The Walking Dead is a smash-hit on television, Warm Bodies transplanted zombies into the teen romance craze and World War Z was planning to take the whole thing global in a way we had never seen before, but there was no place for the overarching story that goes along with the blood suckers to go. After seeing World War Z, the most ambitious entry in the genre to date given its two hundred million dollar price tag, I must say I agree.

Brad Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator/”Winston Wolf” type- fixer who quit the life of international intrigue in order to spend more time with his family. Life, it seems, has other plans when a pandemic of zombies descend on his hometown of Philadelphia and the world at large. He is contacted by his former employees, who want him to track down the source of the virus in the hopes of finding a way to stop the virus. Because he’s the best, it seems that him and only him is competent enough to carry out this task. So, Gerry is whisked away on a scavenger hunt throughout the world so his family can have a place on a UN barge safely settled on the ocean.

The movie billed itself as operating on this huge scale unheard of for a zombie movie. In the past, zombies have been relegated to the low-budget fare with blood gushing prosthetics and usually singular locations. This time, we get vast panoramic shots of exotic locales accentuated with pile-ups of CGI humanoids full of bloodthirsty rage. Blood that, I should say, is never seen. The movie secures its PG-13 rating through quick cut editing and shaky camera techniques we hoped this director would have put to rest after its lukewarm reception with a previous feature of his, the James Bond adventure Quantum of Solace.

This global scale that the movie aims for is kind of misleading. Gerry arrives at several locations based on clues from the previous one and it always seems as though everyone there has just been sitting around waiting for him to arrive. Then, once things conveniently go awry for the story to progress, Gerry has to make a death-defying escape and go to the location of the next clue given to him. It makes for a pretty dull adventure as the story succumbs to this episodic formula once the family has been left behind.

Prior to the film’s release, a lot was written about considering the rewritten ending and supposed on-set clashes between director Marc Forster and Brad Pitt. I can’t speak to any of the on-set goings on obviously, but I can speak to the quality of the chosen ending. What was originally there couldn’t have been as contrived or anticlimactic as what we see in the finished product. I won’t go into details, but the manner in which Gerry unlocks the secrets behind solving the zombie problem is among the most ludicrous and conveniently written chain of events I’ve seen recently.

World War Z is a dull affair, a movie without the wherewithal to tackle its subject matter in an interesting way. To be fair, it is quite a thrill to watch a human pile-up over a giant wall in Jerusalem, but it doesn’t make up for the other two hours of tedious procedure and uninteresting characters.

1.5/4

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