World War Z is an intense thrill ride

We’ve seen countless zombie invasion movies by now, and they’ve even invaded TV with AMC’s The Walking Dead. Gone are the days of George A. Romero’s slowly shambling walking corpses. Thanks to Zack Snyder’s remake of the Romero classic Dawn of the Dead, today’s zombies – for the most part – have the ability to move very quickly. The joke used to be if you couldn’t outrun a zombie, you deserved to be eaten.

In World War Z, the planet is being overrun by zombies … or something like zombies. The film opens in Philadelphia where Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his family are stuck in a massive traffic jam. After the loss of a rear view mirror and a runaway truck plowing through the traffic, Gerry realizes something is very wrong and gets his family out of the car and on the run, witnessing extremely fast people running and jumping through the streets, attacking anyone who isn’t fast enough to get out of their way. One such victim appears to be killed, but begins convulsing wildly, stands back up and joins the others looking for more victims. Is this mass hysteria or some kind of infection?

Luckily, Gerry used to work for the United Nations helping to identify these types of outbreaks and pandemics, so he is pressed into duty once again with the condition that his family be kept safe. Gerry and a young virologist begin a journey to the far corners of the globe to see if they can find the source of the infection, but it seems to be spreading faster than they can get information. Will Gerry be able to save the world, or are we all doomed?

World War Z has to be one of the most intense PG-13 movies I have ever seen. From the opening attack on Philly, the audience is constantly on the edge of their seats as Gerry travels to South Korea, Israel and Wales barely staying a step ahead of the next outbreak. Director Marc Forster keeps the film moving at a breakneck pace as Gerry moves from place to place, only giving us little tidbits of information about the outbreak. We’re actually put in Gerry’s shoes, knowing as much about what’s going on as he does.

Some, especially those who are familiar with the book, may find the scant details a bit of a turnoff, but World War Z, the movie, is not World War Z, the book which is actually a collection of information gathered after the zombie apocalypse. The movie takes some of the set pieces from the book, particularly the Jerusalem scene, but builds the story that takes place in the present from those recollections of the past. By the end of the movie, none of us, on screen or off, knows much more about the outbreak than we did when it started, except for how to survive.

The action, however, is amazing. The Philadelphia attack is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time. The scene set in a seemingly safe Jerusalem is also quite terrifying as the zombies do whatever it takes to get over the wall surrounding the city. And you might think twice about flying anytime soon as well.

Pitt does a great job of being the everyman in an extraordinary situation who really wants to stay with his family but is forced to help find out what is going on. Leaving is actually the only way he can guarantee his family’s safety, unless something happens to him. The Killing‘s Mireille Enos, unfortunately, doesn’t have much to do except sit by and wait for phone calls. The rest of the cast has a few familiar faces – Matthew Fox (for about 2 seconds), David Morse, James Badge Dale, David Andrews – but the film benefits greatly from having a largely unknown supporting cast, making us feel that these are real people instead of being distracted by big stars in small roles.

As much as the film truly belongs to Pitt – he is in practically every scene – the special effects crew deserves a ton of credit for creating some truly frightening creatures, not only with makeup but with digital effects and whatever other camera trickery was used to make them move so fast. While the scene of the zombies trying to get over the Jerusalem wall is impressive, I have to state again that the Philly scene is truly terrifying thanks to the combination of the actors, stunt people, the direction and editing, music and the special effects. And for a 3D conversion, I have to say this one came off much better than Man of Steel. At one point, a zombie is practically in your face … and if I hadn’t already finished my popcorn it would have been all over the person in front of me.

If you’re a fan of the book, you may not be too keen on all the changes made for the movie, but there was no way to accurately translate the style of the book to the screen. World War Z has been a labor of love, blood, sweat and tears for Brad Pitt, who is one of the film’s producers (and it’s also nice to see Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski’s name up on the screen), and I think he’s mostly succeeded in giving audiences the ride of their lives. The film certainly leaves possibilities open for a proposed trilogy, so the bigger question than what caused the outbreak is: will audiences make the film successful enough to continue?