War of the Worldz

"So yeah. Right about here, I think, would be a great point for my shirt to get ripped off?"

Here we are at last. World War Z. The movie adaptation of one of my favorite pieces of zombie literature. So, what did I think?

Goddamn it. Buckle your seatbelts…

First things first. I typically like watching film adaptations because I appreciate the limits and advantages of the medium compared with those of written works. Most of them suck, but a few of them are brilliant. James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential is a rich and expansive crime novel that I thoroughly enjoyed. The 1997 film adaptation was just as much fun because its script took everything dark, intriguing, sexy, and complex about the book and condensed it into a narrower framework that paid homage to its source yet worked beautifully on its own.

I’ll skip the part where I attempt to stand on a flimsy pedestal and seethe over how novels are better than their movie counterparts simply because they are novels. Virtually everyone who’s read the source material of an adaptation will agree that the original content is superior. Yes, books will always be a more effective vessel for exploiting the tool that best scratches our itch for creative satisfaction – that tool being the imagination. Fine and dandy. I watch movie adaptations because I want the visual representation to be distinct. I want it to simultaneously vindicate and surprise my imagination while at least maintaining the flavor of what it’s adapting.

Sadly, World War Z fails in this pursuit and happens to be an average horror/thriller anyway.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t make this point abundantly clear: the film is not actually World War Z. Sure, it shares the same title as the book, but that is quite seriously the only common thread I could identify. This movie is essentially what Sunny Delight is to orange juice. It could have just as easily been titled Zombeez, Zombeez Err’where LOL! and I wouldn’t have sat up in my seat yelling, “Hey! This is the plot to World War Z!” They are completely different experiences. The book deftly and realistically examines what the impact of a worldwide zombie plague would look like through a series of disturbing interviews with survivors of the war. While I would never say it belongs in the upper echelons of American literature, it’s provocative and mature, and gave me plenty to consider once I’d finished it.

The film, on the other hand, jettisons this approach in favor of spectacle and peril. It’s a shallow and ironically soulless movie about U.N. investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), who is tasked with traversing the globe in search of clues to thwart a sudden viral outbreak that is rapidly turning the world’s population into mindless screeching beasts. I don’t really recall the names of any other characters because, frankly, the film didn’t make me give a damn about them. You’ll meet a character, they’ll say or do something to point Gerry in the right direction, then usually die or fade into the background a few minutes later. Its story is riddled with enough horror clichés and bone-headed mistakes by the characters that by movie’s end you’ll likely be shaking your head and chuckling, flabbergasted by their stupidity.

Also, the movie just isn’t particularly scary. Sure there are a few jump scares, but they’re rather cheap, mostly due to the watered down tone of the film in keeping with its PG-13 rating. Whose idea was that? If they were trying to make the movie more palatable then all they succeeded in doing was make it boring. I don’t need excessive gore for thrills, but zombies are brutal and gruesome by their very nature. By making the movie almost entirely bloodless, the filmmakers put a leash on a critical aspect of what makes zombies so horrifying. In my view, this was a mistake. What you’ll mostly see are hordes of zombies running pell-mell at the fleeing populace, pouncing on anyone they find and then sort of slapping them to death. 

"Holy shit, run! They're ferociously tickling everyone in their path!"

It’s frustrating, considering this is pretty much the first highly publicized, big-budget zombie film to be released since Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.  The ending does leave a door open for a sequel, which makes me equal parts nervous and hopeful that Skydance will somehow improve this mess. And while I’m sure when the day comes I’ll haul myself to go see it in theaters, my expectations will certainly be lower than they were for this film. Which is a shame. But my little heart just can’t handle being broken like that again.  

*sniff*