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 Many
a moon ago at a preview screening of the excellent British zom-com,
Shaun of the Dead attended by stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Pegg
requested a consensus on our undead preferences: “Do you like
fast-moving zombies or slow-moving zombies?” The crowds’ adoration for
the lumbering, loping variety was utterly unanimous. I can’t help but
recall that moment nearly every time I see anything zombie related, so
it was very much on my mind viewing World War Z.
Gerry
Lane has a perfect life; a lovely wife and two cereal ad-ready daughters
and a past he’d like to stay buried. That bucolic existence doesn’t
quite go to plan when the daily drive to the girls’ school is riddled
with car crashes, explosions and people acting very strangely. Lane sees
something might be amiss when witnessing a disturbed-looking person
crash their head through a plate glass windshield in order to nibble on
the car’s driver, who seemingly dead, then spasmodically rises, slightly
glassy-eyed to pay that gift of eternal life forward. Not stopping to
question further, Lane hightails it out of town when his past comes
calling. Lane was a special agent with the United Nations and has all
kinds of handy MacGyver-type skills. Reluctant as he is to go back into
service, Lane realises membership has its privileges and in exchange for
his expertise, his old boss promises safety for his family (plus a
plucky youngster whose family was infected) aboard a seaborne
cruiser. There’s no choice, really, so off Lane goes trying to locate
patient zero; the first recorded case of the zombie infection, in the
hopes of discovering a cure. Visits to South Korea and Israel turn up
nothing but overwhelming numbers of flesh eaters and all seems lost
until Lane witnesses a strange phenomenon that leads him to the World
Health Organisation offices in Wales, which happens also to be overrun
with zombies. Lane theorises that whatever the bacteria is that is
turning everyone into the undead can recognise a healthy host; perhaps
purposely infecting the still-living with an illness might camouflage
those who might otherwise become zombie meat and buy time for a cure.
This is a wonderful idea, but first he has to wade through a building
full of hungry people eaters.
Written by Max Brooks in 2006, World War Z was one of my favourite books
of that year. However, I realised when it was optioned to become a film
that there was no way that its structure as a series of oral interviews
tracking from the first known infestation forward around the globe for
nearly a decade, would remain intact. I had hoped that some of the
themes of a world overcoming its petty squabbles and uniting in the
chomping face of the flesh eaters would bear out. There is a small nod
to Israelis and Palestinians joining together for mutual survival, but
as this takes place in the early days of the apocalypse, that’s the only
instance. Brooks’ innovative novel is reduced to a very large budgeted,
bombastic, but terribly ordinary and not very interesting zombie flick.
The film wants us to care about Brad Pitt’s family, such a saccharine
group that one wonders what Mother’s Day card they stepped out of? They
are only a plot device; the impetus for why Lane gets involved and
nothing more. It’s a little disappointing as Mrs. Lane at first seems
to have some skills of her own, protecting her babies from the zombies,
but it’s never explored nor mentioned again. Instead of the worldwide
interaction and slowly finding the means to survive the plague, it’s all
about Lane singlehandedly delivering the world from the threat of a
total undead takeover. Like many of his epiphanies, his means of
conclusion for the zombie-repellant vaccine come way too conveniently.
Even the brilliant scientist who begins Lane on the train of thought
toward the big find is almost immediately and ridiculously dispatched,
so, naturally our hero must step in for the genius. While likable, Brad
Pitt doesn’t quite put over his James Bond/Jason Bourne-lite UN
super-agent. The character isn’t commanding enough and doesn’t have the
snappy dialog and action to make him memorable. 24’s James Badge Dale
makes much more of an impression in a lot less time as a snarky,
seen-it-all military man leading what few troops he has left in an
outpost in South Korea. Likewise more compelling was the shorn-haired
female Israeli agent {Played by Daniella Kertesz}, who, even
after having a hand chopped off to stave off the zombie virus, is still
pretty sharp with a pistol. Simply put, Lane is bland, and if the
audience doesn’t buy that he’s capable of all these incredible feats
then would-be heroic moments like his testing his theory by randomly
choosing a bottle of lethal bacteria to inject himself without even
looking at the label become laughable. With all the devastation across
the globe, I could not be moved to care whether his family lived or died
and thought maybe losing one (or all three) would make the story
more interesting. An intriguing situation that once again isn’t
followed through is when Lane goes missing after a plane crash and the
military proceeds to dump his family off the cruiser safe haven. Talk
about gratitude.
Still,
I guess in a movie like this, it really comes down to the zombie action
and there are some good set pieces. There’s a lot of jumpy frights as
the undead move so ridiculously fast and are so super strong, I pondered
the feasibility of a zombie entrant in the Olympics. No Walking about
it, these are the Running Dead. The wave-like formations of the
mindless creatures whose only motivation is to eat people is pretty
breathtaking; particularly during a celebration gone too loud behind
Israel’s humongous anti-zombie wall. Like an anthill of the undead, the
flesh eaters pile on top of each other to scale the previously
impregnable fort. Nobody likes to be left out of a good party. The
sequence aboard Lane’s escape flight was both fun and educational,
validating my suspicions about where airplane food actually comes from.
Predictable but amusing is the climatic face-off with the chicken-jawed
zombies inside the World Health Organisation building, where Lane and
his compatriots must exercise extreme quiet to get through the
meandering horde. I was glad the freakiest zombie in the movie was
quarantined; an undead WHO scientist kept in isolation that looked so
much like the
Zuni Warrior Fetish Doll from the 1975
horror classic,
Trilogy of Terror, I was having bad
flashbacks. Truly the scariest moment in the entire film.
If
fans of the book are looking for a faithful or even somewhat-vague
adaptation, this is not the one. The title of the book and some faint
ideas have been lifted and that’s all. Despite the script’s hokey,
patronising and tired motivation of, ‘Save my unrealistically perfect
family’, the movie is probably a lot more entertaining for those who’ve
never read the novel. Taken as completely visceral, popcorn-scarfing
fun, with its lowest common denominator super fast zombies, explosions
and special effects-fest set pieces, there are worse things to subject
oneself to this summer than World War Z. It’s unfortunate that it
couldn’t have been much more. Like zombies of yore, World War Z could
do with more brains.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
June
21st, 2013
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