There is some sort of virus and bitten people are turned into violent creatures. The world descends into the zombie apocalypse. The worst thing about it is Marc Forster's fuddled direction, something that also spoiled QUANTUM OF SOLACE, but it's not a big enough to detraction to stop this from being anything other than a solid film. Brad Pitt's lead is both the luckiest and unluckiest guy on the planet at the same time, and the film never deviates from getting up close and personal with its undead menace. If you thought the infected in 28 DAYS LATER moved fast then you haven't seen anything yet! Sure, the characters are thinly-sketched, but that matters little as WORLD WAR Z follows an action-thriller template. It's a film that also manages to be vicious and frightening without being gory, which is a fine achievement.
Scenes of the zombies attacking en masse are brilliantly conceived, and the set-piece that takes place in Israel in the middle of the movie is simply phenomenal. I'm not normally a fan of CGI unless it's done right, but it's done right here. It's based on the terrible Max Brooks book of the same title, but don't let that put you off unlike the book, it actually has a structured narrative, and characters. Sure, PLANET TERROR skirted with the premise but with a sci-fi twist, while this is straightforward zombie stuff. But WORLD WAR Z offers something new: the first, straight, big-budget zombie blockbuster. Nowadays zombie movies are ten-a-penny and zombies are in the public consciousness alongside vampires and werewolves. Yeah, since they hit the mainstream zombie movies have died an (un)death many times over, and I can't help but hark back to the old days where only horror fans knew of the genius of George Romero and Lucio Fulci. WORLD WAR Z, sadly, is delivered as a very disappointing movie no matter if you're familiar with the original source or not. I don't know what was wrong with the final third of the movie where they had to go back and film a new one but what we got here just doesn't work as its too slow and boring.
It was nice seeing David Morse and the rest of the supporting players are good as well. Pitt offers a nice performance but this is certainly far from his best. They're not scary, no creative and the lack of gore shouldn't be bashed because you don't need gore to be scary but at the same time when you have the violence off-screen it just makes the film seem rather childish.
Another problem is that the zombies are all rather bland whether they're real effects or the majority of them CGI. Never did I feel that the world was really coming to an end and this is a big-budget that can't pull this off yet look at what someone like Romero did in no money. In fact, I'm going to say it right out loud that there wasn't a single scary moment to be found in this picture and the entire "disaster" aspect of what was going on just didn't work for me. Pitt has to walk through dark hallways and what really hurts the film is that these sequences just aren't scary.
For the most part we just see Brad Pitt going from one beautiful location to the next and we see that the once beautiful place is now full of zombies. That aspect of the conversation just doesn't bother me but what does bother me is that we've got an insanely high budget and yet they couldn't work out some sort of interesting story. I'll admit upfront that I haven't read the book that this film is based on so I can't comment on if it butchered the book or if the film got it right. On his mission he must travel across the globe trying to see what might work in the human's defense of the zombies. worker who must leave his family behind and go search for a cause or cure for a zombie outbreak that is pretty much destroying every form of life. World War Z (2013) ** (out of 4) Brad Pitt plays a U.N.