Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Back in 2007, my sophomore year of high school, I read a book that floored me. That book was Max Brook’s Zombie Survival Guide. It isn’t a narrative novel, but boy is it good. Max Brooks paints an excellent picture of what the world would be like if zombies existed. He makes up facts that become completely believable. This man was a god in my eyes. Then, my friend told me he had already written another zombie book. I was sold before I even opened the front cover. But then a few years ago I heard they were going to make this novel, World War Z, into a film. Confused as to how this might happen, I was cautiously optimistic about the outcome.
This film is nothing like the book. Alright, I’ll concede to you that it does share the fact that they are both about zombies...but that is it. I don’t understand why they needed to use the title of World War Z when you aren’t going to use the actual story from the book. But at the same time, how can you follow a bunch of short stories about different people surviving the zombie apocalypse? So let me get this out of the way now: I do not consider this an adaptation of World War Z...because if I did, I wouldn’t like it as much as I did.
Ignoring the fact that this is the loosest adaptation ever, this movie was pretty damn good. I think the best place to start would be the visuals, which were exemplary. Since this is about the zombie virus spreading across the world, we get to see Brad Pitt’s character travel across several different countries. The director, Marc Forster, did a really impressive thing in capturing the feel of the different parts of the world that Pitt travels to. He also does a great job of adding vast amounts of tension through the camerawork. Especially in the final scenes at WHO. 
And speaking of visuals, can we talk about how awesome the zombies looked? I know a fair amount of it was CGI (like all of the zombie ladders we saw in the commercials) but even the close up zombies, which were obviously done with makeup, looked phenomenal. This was like Walking Dead level of awesome zombies.
I think that the visuals wouldn’t have been nearly as good if they hadn’t had such an excellent script to support them. Firstly, I loved that there was no real introduction. We were just thrown into the zombie apocalypse, and it was glorious. It was a ballsy decision by the writers, but one that I fully support. Then there was how they explained everything to us. We didn’t just get a bunch of monologues as a poor form of exposition, no, we got a lot of awesome dialogues that gave the information to us. I’ve heard a lot of people complain, saying that Damon Lindelof’s involvement in this movie ruined the script, but I disagree. I think that Drew Goddard’s involvement was too impressive to be ruined by Lindelof. Goddard’s trademarks really show through in a lot of the dialogue, and a huge part of the character backgrounds.
------------------------------------------------
While this movie shares a name with a novel and nothing more, that doesn’t detract from the stunning visuals, strong script, and excellent performance from Brad Pitt. Any zombie fan will appreciate this film, and I think even non-zombie fans will find parts to enjoy.
Writing: 7/10
Directing: 7.5/10
Acting: 7.5/10
Pacing: 6.5/10
Rewatchability: 6.5/10
Score: 7.0/10
