World War Z starts off as a creepy
pandemic-movie, morphs into a zombie thriller for about twenty minutes and then
stops.
Oh, you wanted more of a recap than
that?
It was a solid movie with good
acting and a decent plot. For the
record, I have not read the novel by Max Brooks, so I have nothing to compare
it to, but as far as zombie movies go, it was ok. The camera work was actually incredibly well
done, mirroring the pace dictated by the script. When the scenes were calm and more of a
talking head variety, they camera was slow and “normal” but when the action
kicked into high gear (and by action I basically mean people running from
zombies) then the camerawork was frenetic, often losing the main focus of the
scene (usually Brad Pitt) but showing everything else around him.
One thing that I really enjoyed was
the realism that was shown in the reactions to the pandemic. It definitely felt like the writers tried to
stay as true to human nature as they could.
Oftentimes when you see any kind of post apocalyptic movie (and this
qualifies) you are shown extreme examples of behavior to drive home the severity
of the situation. In World War Z, everything feels organic in
nature and relatively believable (though the “tenth man” discussion in the
Jerusalem sequence was a bit far-fetched).
The main issue I had with this
movie though was the fact that it didn’t really know what it was, or what kind
of movie it wanted to be. It was almost
like the producers took 28 Days Later,
any traditional zombie movie, and Indiana Jones and put them in a blender. At times, it worked. The individual pieces were well crafted, but
when you put them all together, it was easy to find something that was
lacking. For example, if you are making
a zombie movie in any respect, you would think that it would have a bit more
gore to it. I realize that they probably
had to trim that out to maintain the PG-13 rating, but I would have to ask why?
Why was that rating so essential to this project? You’re making a zombie movie, with a big-name
movie star, based on a very popular book.
You can’t tell me that those three factors wouldn’t have got you your
desired audience and you could have still made things a bit more
authentic. It doesn’t appear like any of
the zombies really eat their victims; they just bite them and run away, so I
can understand not showing any gore there.
However there is a sequence where Pitt’s character cuts the hand of a
soldier off to stop the infection from spreading after she is bit. It looks like, in that sequence as well as
the part where he changes her bandages, that they are going to great lengths to
not show you that injury, even from a profile view. I’m not some bloodthirsty bastard that needs
to see the bone and blood pouring out of the wound, but the camera work in
those sequences is almost like the director said “whatever you do, don’t show
the wound”. It’s an insult to anyone
that came to the movie looking for a real zombie movie. It’s just too blatant-looking of a move to be
anything but mandated from someone and not just a conscious decision of the
director.
Speaking of the zombies, I liked
them…to a point. I know they aren’t
traditional zombies, but I don’t think that is what the filmmakers here were
trying to convey. This wasn’t a
traditional zombie movie at all. It was
a pandemic movie, where that pandemic was something that turned the hosts into
zombies. I would have liked to know a
bit more about what caused it and, more importantly, how it kept them
going. The zombies were dormant when
devoid of outside stimulus (like noise, they apparently hate noise) but when
they get riled up, they go batshit insane.
While they don’t really run any faster than a normal human would, they
keep going without an end in sight until they reach their prey. Even then, it’s usually a bite and then they
move on. How in the hell are they able
to do that? If they aren’t actually
eating any of their victims then they aren’t receiving nourishment (not that
traditional zombies could really metabolize their victims, but they weren’t
moving at an enhanced speed) so how could they keep up that pace? I would think that after that initial push,
their bodies would start to break down.
Yes, they wouldn’t stop, and would probably eventually turn into the
slow moving zombies we all know and love, but it would be more believable. Not only that, but early on in the movie we
are treated to the hypothesis that this comes from a virus, and that is what
creates the zombies. Later on, when they
are trying to devise a defense, we are informed that the zombies, not being
alive, cannot carry a virus or bacteria around their bodies (and therefore
can’t be stopped by biological warfare).
So which is it? Is this not a
virus, or is the virus only what kills them initially? If that is the case, what reanimates them and
keeps them going? In short, I could have
done with a bit more science and a bit less zombies walking around with their
teeth chattering like a naked guy in the arctic circle.
While part of me was happy that
“patient Zero” was not found, and the origin of the virus (if it was actually a
virus) was never completely figured out, leaving the ending so open-ended it felt
like a cop-out in a way. I realize that
finding a way to fight back (I’m trying to do this without spoiling anything
for anyone, bear with me), and not actually fighting back, was probably the
main conflict all along and therefore the climax of the story revolved around
that. However, a more comprehensive
denouement than “we fought back” should have been utilized. How much of the world’s population was
infected? What happened to the
survivors? Hell, what happened to the world when the zombies were
eradicated? How could they be sure they
had all of the zombies eradicated anyway?
Obviously if there was one left it could transform the world in
months. What about the people that were
infected by the camouflage, any side effect to that? None of these questions were sufficiently
answered, hell the movie ended before answers were even available in the
timeline of the movie itself. It almost
feels like we were cheated out of an additional twenty minutes of movie. If they had provided a more succinct and
comprehensive wrap-up it would have put a nice bow on the movie and made it a
memorable chapter in the pantheon of zombie fiction. Instead we are left wondering.
No comments:
Post a Comment