I don’t often write full-out movie reviews, but I have a lot of thoughts about this flick. I am a fan of the zombie genre. I am a loyal reader and watcher of The Walking Dead. I especially like inventive takes on the genre. I thought Warm Bodies was a revelation, paying homage to Romeo and Juliet and spoofing Twilight. I will defend to the death Zombie Strippers as a brilliant flick, as who would’ve thought you could adapt Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinocéros with zombies and porn stars playing strippers and make a commentary on the American government?

Being a fan of inventive zombie fiction, World War Z by Max Brooks (son of Mel and Mrs Robinson) is one of my favourites. I’ve read the book and listened to the audio several times. It is not an action tale. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s The Good War, it comprises of personal accounts of The Zombie War. It’s an engaging and chilling tale of the collapse and rebuilding of civilization due to a zombie plague.

Just to put this up front: I was NOT thrilled with the idea of the movie. The book is such a product of its medium, I knew it wasn’t going to translate to film. It is not popcorn movie blockbuster flick material. One of my favourite chapters is actually about Arthur Sinclair Junior from “Department of Strategic Resources” describing the conservation of resources and the retraining of the potential workforce from CEOs to repairmen. It comes off as something more suited to an apocalyptic West Wing (Which is aided in the audio by the character of Arthur Sinclair Junior being played by Alan Alda). Actual battle scenarios, fighting against the zombies, are actually few and far between, focusing on the human survival and socio-political ramifications of such an outbreak. That is what made World War Z unique. The only way to do a proper adaptation would have been as a pseudo-documentary miniseries, in the style of Ken Burns. Having people recount their stories with pictures and footage (both “real” and “recreated”) punctuating the narrative.

However, I thought I’d give the movie a shot. I knew it wouldn’t be like the book, but maybe, possibly it would be a decent zombie flick. The fact I wasn’t too thrilled about it can be seen that it’s been out for a while and I’m only getting to it now. But I thought I’d give it a chance.

Nope.

Despite stripping away everything that made the book unique in favour of an action-packed popcorn flick, it’s boring. The fighting is dull and mostly just people running while a shaky camera follows them.  The parts without zombies are tedious.

(SPOILER WARNING! I’m giving the entire plot away. But the movie is so tedious, I’m saving you fourteen dollars and two hours of your life)

The movie focuses on Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a former UN employee. He did… Something. He went into dangerous place and did stuff. Stuff that only he was capable of doing. They never really state clearly what those things were, but by God, he was good at it. He’s retired now, because– as we saw in Pacific Rim— the only person capable of saving the world has to be retired.

There have been rumblings of some sort of rabies that we get through an info-dump– I mean radio news report. But the outbreak is new, considering the movie starts with Gerry making pancakes and asking his daughter what she wants for her birthday. But they head out in their car to– I dunno, are they already running? It doesn’t come off like that, as they’re very confused why they’re stuck in traffic. But shit goes down and sudden civilization is collapsing. Damn civilization! Why must you be so fragile?

I’m going to have to compare to the book. I’m sorry, I do. That is because World War Z is one of the few Zombie Apocalypse stories that actually handles the fall of civilization well. It takes a long time. It’s not a matter of hours or days or even weeks. It takes months for things to truly go to hell. That’s why things like 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead have their protagonists wake up from comas… Well, that and the homage to Day of the Triffids. It’s a way to skip over the initial slow growth of an outbreak and get right to the action. I don’t care how powerful your zombies are, you’re not going to have a full global catastrophe with mindless human sized combatants in a matter of hours.

Anyway, Gerry and his family end up in the middle of Philadelphia trying to get away from the hordes of zombies. The zombies have been changed from the original book. Instead of shambling corpses, they’re super faster, super strong killing machines. Which actually makes them less scary. The slow moving creatures fall into Uncanny Valley territory. They seem human, but there’s just something… Off. This is missing from the super-charged creatures.

The movie also can’t decide if the creatures are intelligent or not. They’re intelligent enough to use one another to get over walls and try to break into things to get to their quarry. Yet they’re not intelligent enough to not bash their head against things to try and break through windows. Being that a zombie’s brain is their only vulnerable point, you would think they would try to preserve that. Not that any of the zombies die from bashing their skulls on things. Like I said, they’re super-charged or something.

Despite his retirement, Gerry is so super special important to the UN they send a team in to retrieve him and his family. They lose the RV they stole in an entirely pointless scene to get asthma medication for one of the daughters and have to take refuge with an immigrant family, who promptly get killed with the exception of their son, Tomas, whom Gerry brings with him.

Thus brings up one of my big sore points with this movie. Rather than calling this World War Z, a much more honest title would have been Brad Pitt Steps Over the Bodies of Minorities to Save the World. Tomas’ family takes in Gerry’s, only to be completely savaged and they are far from the only minorities to die just to save Gerry.

I didn’t give a crap if Gerry and his family survived. There was no emotional connection to them. I’m supposed to care that they’re trying desperately to be rescued by the UN? Why should I? At least the UN was actively trying to save them. What about all of the other people who were suffering and dying while dripping with privilege Brad Pitt gets a helicopter sent into save him?

Kids who create dejection regularly have a family history of the sickness, commonly a guardian who had discouragement at an tadalafil levitra early age. Encourage your man for having a general health checkup and support him. viagra soft Like all other diseases and conditions in tadalafil without rx this category, Gout stems from an overly acidic body chemistry. Gupta, tadalafil overnight delivery sex doctor in Delhi. But Gerry is important. For reasons. Because of course the UN hasn’t had someone else take over Gerry’s super important if somewhat vague job since his retirement. Someone who has been working on this problem since it started to come up, since it’s already so bad that buildings are being blown up to contain the plague.

Gerry needs to escort virologist Andrew Fassbach (Elyes Gabel) to South Korea, in hopes of finding Patient Zero to find a vaccine. Because seriously, the UN has no one more qualified who is actually working for them. In return, they’ll keep Gerry’s family safe. Gerry gives his wife a satellite phone to keep in contact with her so blah, blah, blah… I’m fucking bored.

Fassbach explains to Gerry in his best impersonation of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park that “mother nature is a serial killer”. But that like all serial killers, she “leaves clues that you just have to figure out”. And then, since he’s a minority and by god, Brad Pitt has to be the hero, he accidentally shoots himself in the head during the skirmish against the zombies.

There’s some bullshit exposition at a military base and seriously I’m really bored. All that important is that Gerry finds out that Israel seemed to have prior knowledge of the outbreak and has quarantined itself. So Gerry is off to Israel and makes a “harrowing escape” because his wife calls while he’s moving through a group of zombies. Gee, if only the UN took safety precautions like not letting a civilian have an open comm to someone who is on a dangerous mission. And having that be the only point of contact.

Once Gerry gets to Israel, he gets some more exposition. The reason Israel has walled itself off is because of information they’d gotten. But the wall is useless because people start singing– as one does during the apocalypse– and the zombies outside ramp up on each other to get over the wall.

Gerry is protected at all costs, because… Reasons! He ends up getting away with an Israeli soldier who will only go by her rank of Segen (Daniella Kertesz)– save for the loss of her left hand, due to a zombie biting her and Gerry amputating it.

Segen (which, by the way, means Lieutenant) is the only thing I actually really liked in the movie. She was a capable soldier, yet still came off as a scared kid at the right times, like when she thinks she’s going to die from the bite.

Gerry figures out that the zombies won’t attack sick people. So they fly to Cardiff in order to visit a World Health Organization base to test the theory. There’s antics on the plane and Gerry and Segen are the only ones who get out alive. Still bored.

But hey, it’s Peter Capaldi as one of the WHO Doctors! I started inappropriately laughing in the theatre, because I like my British telly and seeing Peter Capaldi in a medical setting gave me Ronnie Pilfrey from Fortysomething flashbacks.

They decide to test Gerry’s theory by injecting someone with a deadly– but curable– disease and seeing if the zombies attack them. But of course, the diseases are surrounded by zombies! Bullshit running sequence and Gerry is alone in the disease storage room with a zombie outside! Gasp, oh… I am so scared for him.

He injects himself with a disease. Because I’m certain WHO keeps its viruses in easy to inject serving sizes that won’t, you know, kill you instantly. It works, of course, and a “vaccine” is made! Woo-hoo! Gerry returns to his family.

But… Wait… THAT’S NOT A VACCINE! They state in the movie that it’s not a vaccine, but camouflage but once it works, they quickly backtrack and call it a vaccine and it’s shown being distributed to people to inject to protect themselves.

It’s still not a vaccine! It’s a disease! Why are you injecting people willy-nilly? Isn’t that going to make a lot of people really sick?

This movie half-asses itself on a lot of levels. I didn’t care about Gerry or his family, so there was no emotional connection. There was none of the nuance of the book to keep me interested. Needing to keep a PG-13 rating kept me from getting at all scared.  It was just things happened and then it was over.

If you want to experience World War Z, read the book. Or, better yet, check out the audiobook. I don’t normally push an audiobook over reading, but the audio is ridiculously good, with each recollection told by another actor, all tied together by Max Brooks himself as the interviewer. The cast is stellar, with people like the previously mentioned Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Eamonn Walker and Carl Reiner. I have not had the chance to listen to the unabridged version– which just came out in May– but it’s added the likes of F. Murray Abraham, Rene Auberjonois, Nathan Fillion and Martin Scorsese to the cast.

That is the one good thing to come out of seeing World War Z. I decided to buy the unabridged audio from iTunes, as well as Closure, Ltd and Other Zombie Tales. Brad Pitt’s take on the Zombie Apocalypse is lacking and I would much rather immerse myself in the world as recalled by those Max Brooks originally wrote. It is a far more satisfying, despite not costing $125 million dollars. If you ask me, in the battle for best Apocalyptic Disaster, World War Z is handily trounced by Pacific Rim.