World War Z Review

Written by:  Jon Guzik

With a movie like “World War Z”, it’s much easier to just give a breakdown of things that just didn’t work  or, well, sucked.

PG-13—The fact that this is a zombie movie, and NOT rated R is baffling to me.  In a time where zombie themed media is taking the world by storm I can see them wanting to attract a broader audience, but this movie just made it ridiculous.  There was very, VERY little blood.  And some of the blood we do see, is digitally turned black so as to make it seem like it’s not blood.  So are we just supposed to assume that Brad Pitt was changing his oil in the midst of a zombie war zone?  Shit, the Walking Dead on AMC has more graphic content and it’s not even on HBO or Showtime!

Brad Pitt—Usually this would mean a good thing for a movie, having Brad Pitt headlining a Zombie pic---what could go wrong?  Well to answer, a lot.  The biggest problem is that fact that Brad Pitt’s part could have literally been played by 95% of other actors his age.  He brings absolutely nothing to the movie (except a producing credit and his name splattered all over movies and advertisements).  This is all without even mentioning the fact the Pitt must have put his invincibility cheat on, because he gets out of the most insane circumstances almost unscathed, including but not limited to traveling across the globe during a virus breakout taking over the world, and surviving a plane crash.  Really removes any tension when our "hero" can't really die (or even bleed red!).

Horrible CGI Zombies—I hate to bring up the comparison again, but it’s almost unavoidable:  but why does a TV show like Walking Dead have better looking zombies than a film like this costing $200 million+???  These CGI zombies look God awful, and close up ones with full makeup look no better.  Point being, if you’re not afraid or at least un-easy towards the zombies, then you don’t feel suspense as people run from them in the movie.

 

Real convincing...

 

RESHOOTS—For those of you who don’t read movie news 24/7 like myself, you might not know the fact that this movie once cost $125 million to make, only to go eventually over $200 million after the had to reshoot a large portion of the latter half of the film after changing the ending.  Usually when movies do this, it’s not at all a good sign, and with this movie a lot of people gave it the benefit of the doubt.  But no amount of money can fix a bad movie, or an ending that works for that bad movie.  Maybe if they weren’t so occupied blacking out blood for the kids out there, they could have focused better on a cohesive story.

Well that’s all that really needs to be said.  For the very few people who read this, half of the reason I would hope you do is to  be able to avoid possible disappointments in movies your excited for, therefore saving you money.  Do that here, please.  At the very least, wait until an unrated cut for BluRay comes out (if there even will be one).  But if you’re into a bloody good time of a zombie movie, comparable to AMC’s The Walking Dead, or other zombie flicks like 28 Days Later or Zombieland, then look elsewhere.

Grade: D

 

P.S.--I'm not so sure Earth would run this efficiently in a world-wide panic.  The movie "Contagion" played this much better.