Film Review: World War Z

With zombie apocalypse being a popular topic discussed right now there is no doubt that World War Z will be a hit at the box office let alone the fact it has A-lister Brad Pitt starring.  But is the film that is based on Max Brooks' novel any good? Well, as an entertaining popcorn summer blockbuster I would say yes.

The story follows Gerry Lane, a former United Nations Investigator who must travel around the world in order to find answers to stop a zombie apocalypse from continuing in order to save his family and humanity.

The start of the apocalypse begins in the film sooner than I expected.  Usually in disaster films the disaster doesn't start until a good 20 minutes in order for the audience to become familiar with the film's main protagonist, World War Z takes a different approach.  The only time we really get to know Lane is literally the first five minutes.  It's as though they wanted to get the back story of a former UNI and now family man out of the way quickly so the zombies could enter and become the film's main focus. The family are forgotten about for the most of the film and turn into useless and unnecessary characters. It really did feel as though the set pieces were the only scenes that I could remember but for a summer blockbuster they are meant to be the scenes you remember most.  The action is highly entertaining, one standing out is one set in Jerusalem.  I won't ruin this scene but for me it was the film's stand out point and the visual effects are pretty impressive.

Half way through the film I did notice a pattern emerging.  They will be in one country, find out more information about what this apocalypse is and whether a cure exists and then zombies attack and it goes round that loop for the entire film.  It felt as though they were trying too hard to express the fact this is WORLD War Z.  However, there is one section set in Wales, which I rather liked since I live there and having zombies attacking there is very cool. 

If you have watched many horror films you may also find this film to be slightly predictable in places ie you know when the zombies are going to appear next.  This however didn't ruin me from having a good time while watching it as I found the zombie attacks to be highly enjoyable even though with having hundreds running at once it looked like a marathon was taking place but going completely out of control.

On the topic of the zombies there was one thing in the film which I found to be funny but odd. When they refer to them they actually for the majority of the time call them zombies.  With the tense tone I couldn't take it seriously when they mentioned the word zombie as it didn't seem to fit and it just sounded funny when they said it.  It's like having Sean Penn and Keanu Reeves doing a Monty Python sketch, it would just seem odd and out of place.

For a summer blockbuster World War Z does succeed in entertaining it's audience.  The action is fun to watch but if you take that away then the film is empty.  It isn't the best zombie film I have seen but it was the first where I felt that if this actually happened then we'd have no chance.