Movie Review: World War Z

From IMDB: United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.

Trailer:

  

World War Z is definitely what you would classify as a summer blockbuster. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s fast paced, and the cast is led by an A-lister. I wouldn’t say it was a fun movie, because it was pretty terrifying. I really like summer blockbusters. I’m all about entertainment as entertainment. I don’t feel the need to get some higher meaning out of every movie I see. I mean, it’s great if I do, but sometimes, it’s really fun to watch a bunch of explosions and see Brad Pitt run around killing zombies and saving the world. There was a lot of audience participation in the theater I was in. We most certainly had some Zombie-noobs in the audience, because we had screaming women and distressed laughter in moments where the only reaction people could muster was laughter, due to zombie overload. My experience with zombies is limited to this list:

1.       Some of the first season of “The Walking Dead”

2.       Zombieland

3.       Warm Bodies

4.       Shaun of the Dead

5.       World War Z

So I don’t claim to be a zombie expert or anything, but I’m fairly sure that some of the people in the theater didn’t even know World War Z was a zombie movie. Which was quite entertaining for me.

If you’ve seen “The Walking Dead”, the zombie aspects of this movie will be a walk in the park. That’s not to say that the zombies were all sunshine and rainbows; they were horrifying, creepy, and disgusting. But there wasn’t really any eating of people (they did bite people, but they didn’t chow down or anything). I was really creeped out by the swarming and how fast the zombies moved, which is not how they usually move in other franchises.

As an actress, I found myself impressed by the physicality shown by the actors portraying the zombies. It sounds like it wouldn’t be too difficult a task, but when you really watch exactly what they are doing, it takes a lot of energy and work to perform the role of a zombie.

And as weird as that sounded, I’m not ashamed.

The thing about World War Z is that it was one long misery-fest. Things start out bad and they just get worse. And worse. And worse. Even when something slightly good happened (AKA Israel; if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about), something terrible came along and demolished the slightly good thing. I just started assuming that something bad was always about to happen. However, the movie did a very good job of moving the plot along. It trekked along at a fast pace, careful not to dwell on anything unimportant. There weren’t really any ‘filler’ scenes, and Brad Pitt never stayed in one place for long.

There is something so sympathetic about Brad Pitt’s face in this entire movie that you just feel so bad for him and even though you want him to just say “NO, I’m staying with my family”, you know he is going to sacrifice everything to try to save the world. He’s just that kind of guy. But believe it or not, there were quite a few people like that. I was surprised by the amount of heroes in this movie, actually. It seemed like people stepped up every time a new misery descended on the world.

Israeli soldier chick was a beast. That’s all I have to say about that awesomeness.

And then there was this awesome monologue given early on by this scientist who is the best hope of finding a cure or discovering where the virus originated. It goes a little something like this: “Mother Nature is a serial killer. She wants to get caught, she leaves bread crumbs, she leaves clues… Mother nature knows how to disguise her weakness as strength.” This was probably my favorite moment of the movie.

So if you’re NOT a fan of zombies, as in, they give you nightmares or make you sick, I don’t recommend that you see World War Z any time soon. Or ever. But if the undead don’t make you squeamish, this suspenseful, action-packed race against time is worth a watch on the big screen.