WORLD WAR Z REVIEW

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