World War Z

Trailer- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EC7P5WdUko

How freaking awesome are zombies? They seem to have infected [I'm sorry] pop-culture in the last few years and usually deliver fantastic results. The Resident Evil games. The Walking Dead. We also had the rather brilliant Warm Bodies earlier this year.

World War Z [or World War Zed if you're British] comes out at the peak of this zombie hype and in my opinion it really delivers. It's high octane and tense as hell in parts with only occasional segments of slow-down.

There's not a lot of pussy-footing around at the start of the film. After a nice little title sequence packed full of symbolism and such not an awful lot of time is wasted until Brad Pitt and his family find themselves right in the middle of zombie-geddon. There's 2 minutes of 'look how nice our family life is, we'll just head outside...' then suddenly 'ZOMBIES! HELICOPTERS! ALL OF THE S'PLOSIONS!' It's what you paid to see and it's what you get- and a lot of it.

I've seen the whole family element criticised by other reviewers saying they're pretty useless but I think they do need to be there. They keep Brad Pitt's character Gerry human and gives him something to fight for. The film follows Gerry as he flies over the world getting attacked by zombies here and there. Having the occasional scene of his emotional wife trying to call him while she tucks in his children is a nice reminder that we really don't want Gerry to die.

The scenes in World War Z where there are masses and masses of zombies- ie what you see on the posters - are by far the film's strong point. It's fast paced and excellently shot. One small flaw is the film uses its massive scale blockbuster zombie chase in the middle of the film rather than saving it for the end. What follows isn't boring in the slightest but it's just a shame that nothing quite reaches the chaos and outright madness that is the scene in Jerusalem. If they'd just done that again in another big city I'd be perfectly happy.

If it were that way though we wouldn't get perhaps the tensest scenes I've ever witnessed in a film since Argo. There's a lot of creeping down corridors in silence that had me on the edge of my seat. It doesn't go for the cheap constant jump scares either, it keeps you waiting and the film is better off for it. I've heard it being compared to the air-duct scenes in Alien and I can see why.

There are moments where the film slows down and you kinda wish the zombies would throw open the door and start another well choreographed action scene but it's all worth the wait. I've maybe played a little too much House of The Dead as well but I think it would have been better if a little more gore was shown. Apparently its a PG13 in America so it explains the sudden panning away as a zombie gets a bullet through it's head and the significant lack of blood. It's a 15 in the UK though so it would have been nice to have a gorier version. Just saying- there was a scene with a fast spinning plane propeller and  a runway full of zombies, there's only one way in which it should have ended.

I'm not sure how closely it sticks to the book [I'm willing to guess not much at all] but World War Z is a great zombie film and worthy of your time. If it were maybe just a little more mindless and paced a little better it would be near perfect.

8/10

Main Blog - http://www.elephantchris.blogspot.co.uk/