Review of World War Z (2013) by Henry P — 09 Oct 2015

For once, the Germans didn't start a world war. Nor do any other European nation, Asian nation, African nation, nor did any North or South American nation start this war. It all started when bodies started being reanimated mysteriously.

We don't know who started it, and we don't know what they want. This creates a common foe for all humanity thought previously unimaginable: The undead. But after seeing a barrage of news clips and National Geographic-esque nature-footage-on-acid, we get the title, followed by just another morning in the life of Gerry Lane, (Brad Pitt) a former United Nations investigator, and his wife Karin (Mereille Enos) woken up by their excited kids, and after a pancake breakfast, they're off to school.

After seeing a large influx of helicopters, things go crazy as Gerry's car is demirrorized by a motorcycle, followed soon by mass hysteria, and from there, things get ugly (Literally): military's running around, and in the midst of the chaos, we see some random people drop down, and after 12 seconds, they spring back up and somehow manage to act crazier than everybody around them.

They aren't sane, because they aren't alive. The dead have risen, and Gerry uses his U.N. contact Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) to get an airlift. by the end of the first half, Gerry decides to use his particular set of skills from his old job to look for a cure, to find a cure, and to not kill it.

What director Marc Forster is not skilled at is developing characters: Gerry and his family seem fairly relatable, but they're given so little time and so few no meaningful moments beyond basics: We get it, they are a family.

One breakfast was not meaningful enough here. Now onto the picture: Fair warning to all, this gets quite graphic. There is a point in the first place Gerry goes that pulls the "worse in the imagination" trick off very well, but the zombies are extremely grotesque, but it works to make it more realistic.

It was for a good reason, and desire to get a PG-13 rating aside, there are some things worse in our imagination than anything Marc Forster could (or probably would, if given the chance) put on screen.

Want not so grotesque, but unrealistic zombies? Try Wreck-It Ralph, where only one appears in one scene, and isn't even wrinkled right. Moving along, we get a generic, but usable, soundtrack from Marco Beltrami, which accomplishes suspense to a mild extent, but boldly stays where most suspenseful films have gone before.

Thank the other audio people we got silence where it would be more suspenseful than anything Marco Beltrami could write/conduct. Unlike the book, there is minimal swearing (Only two s-words), which lowers some of the intensity the book used to make it clear, but when you consider the aforementioned zombies, they more than make up for it.

Not as well written as the book, but grotesque/realistic enough to be a (not the) choice Halloween jump-scare film.