Yet again the zombie horde claws its way onto the big screen with World War Z. Many years have passed since 1968, when a young George A. Romero filmed his masterpiece debut: The Night of the Living Dead. Moving on from that period many things have changed in the horror world, especially the understanding of what makes a zombie. If Romero wanted to represent the communist menace with his debut directorial effort (ugly and slow, stupid but dangerous and contagious), the evolution of the zombie has geared itself towards a more contemporary topic: the threat of terrorism.
In Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, zombies were represented in a way that acted as a fitting allegory for this threat, becoming faster and more efficient, similar to the terrorist threats of a post 9/11 world. This is the incarnation of the zombie that has become most prevalent in the collective public consciousness and is the most widespread representation of the creature in the 21st century media.
Is this new spin on the zombie all it’s cracked up to be? That all depends. The horror narrative was born to describe the desolation of the present, to denounce the disgust prevalent in common life. Separating the situation and the protagonists from this concept, all the stories instantly lose their meaning and this is unfortunately true for this movie, as I’m going to explain in this World War Z review.
The movie can trace its origins back to its namesake, Max Brooks’ best-selling novel – his second, after the brilliant The Zombie Survival Guide. The author (son of the comedy genius Mel Brooks) released a story that used all the tropes of the genre with an original composition. What set the book apart was the fact it was written as a series of interviews that elucidate the fate of the world. With the development of the story, the reader is presented with an angry satire of the socio-political reality of the world and the conclusion is one of the most ingenious found within the literary sphere.
The transposition into cinema can’t really boast the same artistic success, mainly due to a tumultuous production history. The rights to the book have been disputed for years by Leonardo DiCaprio with his Appian Way, but eventually Brad Pitt and his PlanB acquired them. J. Michael Straczynski (author of a long and controversial run on Spider Man comic, and of the script of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling) was initially meant to provide the script, but eventually Matthew Carnaham was employed to recast his script. After that two famous writers, Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard (the minds behind the Lost series and respective authors of Prometheus and Cabin in the Woods) had to rewrite part of the screenplay, and clearly the final result did not benefit from these constant changes resulting in the loss of a unified vision.
The result is less than exciting as this treatment has resulted in the script losing a sense of narration and a zombie film that certainly seems to be dead on arrival. Many things have been altered from the books and to avoid censor, all aspects of policy have been omitted. The infection doesn’t start in China and the narrative concludes with an unrealistic ending that panders to the Hollywood audience with the blonde hero saving the world with a convenient deus ex machina.
Trailers on the Web and television announced an adrenaline-fueled horror flick, but World War Z disappoints even from this point of view. The only really exciting scenes are the two showed in trailers (the pyramid of zombies and their run on the street of the Far East), but are penalized by a sub par editing and a poor direction. Marc Forster demonstrated with Quantum of Solace that action is not the narrative genre he does best (as a reminder, he released the pretty good Neverland with Johnny Depp) and World War Z just seems to confirm this feeling. No single scene can inspire the minds or the hearts of the audience, and all are ultimately forgettable. This is disappointing, as many fans were hoping for a faithful adaption of the novel.
There’s little to say about the actors. Brad Pitt’s performance is acceptable, but his character (created specifically for the movie, as he wasn’t in the novel) is hard to empathise with and the same can be said of the others.
