United
Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop
the Zombie pandemic that is topping armies and governments, and threatening to
destroy humanity itself.
Starring:
Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, and Daniella Kertesz
Directed
by: Marc Foster
Written
by: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof
This is one of those movies that I had
a couple of concerns about before seeing. The first one being that there would
be too many CGI zombies, and not enough real ones. After all, who could miss
the hoards of fake zombies seen in the previews? The good news is that there
are some real zombies, and they look pretty good.
The bad news is that this isn't the
typical zombie movie where the audience gets to see a bloody mess as a zombie
tears someone apart. The zombies do attack people, but the audience never gets
an up close juice picture of the action. I guess audiences will just have to
wait for The Walking Dead to return for that (damn PG-13 movies!)
While lacking some blood, and guts, the
action scenes are pretty good. There are a couple of scenes where they are
running from zombies of course. What's good about these zombies is that they
are fast, and this results in some scenes of utter chaos. One of those scenes
takes place on an airplane that quickly gets overtaken by zombies. Being on a
plane with fast zombies is definitely not a good situation to be in.
Besides the chaotic scenes, there are
also some intense, and suspenseful scenes. There is one where it’s a
pitch-black rainy night, and they have to make it back to the plane. Of course
there are zombies out there somewhere. There is also a great scene in a lab
full of zombies just waiting for someone to make the wrong move. It kind of
reminded me of playing Resident Evil!
Onto my other concern about the movie,
which is Brad Pitt playing the lead character. Honestly, I'm not his biggest
fan, but there could have been some worse choices. While I'm still not sure
this is the best role for him, he isn't as bad as I thought. Maybe the audience
could have gotten a little more variety in his emotions.
While I’m talking about the casting,
I’m a fan of Mireille Enos on “The Killing,” but I just don’t see her married
to Brad Pitt (no offense intended). Overall, the acting is pretty good, even as
they travel to other countries. Daniella Kertesz, who plays a soldier named
Segen, does a good job even though she doesn’t say a whole lot. Again,
everything comes back to Brad.
Going back to the zombies, there is
something that is very interesting about them that set them apart from usual
zombies. Without giving it away, there is something different about their
behavior besides just being fast moving zombies. It’s an interesting theory,
and kind of presents a different way of looking at zombies. It also changes the
dynamics of who might survive this kind of zombie apocalypse as opposed to who
typical survive it. I would love to go in more detail, but it would ruin most
of the movie.
So while I had some concerns going into
the movie, I still ended up enjoying it. Yes, it would have been nice to see
hoards of real zombies instead of CGI ones. However, real ones probably
couldn’t have done some of the things that they did. The few real zombies
certainly made up for the fake ones, although it would have been nice to see
them chew someone apart. Brad Pitt actually does a descent job, along with the
entire cast. The difference in the behavior of these zombies, and the search to
figure it out is what really had me hooked. So while not being the typical
zombie movie, I still give it 3 pools of blood.
HorrO