"World War Z" is one helluva movie. It's too bad that movie takes place just outside the frame of the one we got.
Nearly everything about it feels like it should be the background to a far more interesting movie taking place elsewhere. Explosions drop and zombies suddenly appear. Major cities are leveled. Entire populations are decimated. Brad Pitt's hair gets sensually tousled.
And yet we never get a sense of this chaos. Never get a sense for how truly epic director Marc Forster feels this story should be. Instead he offers us mere glimpses of the carnage wrought on our planet before hurriedly rushing to the next scene of exposition.
Intriguing notions such as how North Korea defends itself against the undead are raised, then swept under the rug. A young boy attempts to tag along with Pitt before the movie realizes it doesn't know what to do with him. Israel somehow tapped into the secret of impending zombie doom before the world, but no one seems to care.
"World War Z" plays like a carnival barker pitching us the most Epic Zombie Apocalypse Ever, but when we're shilled our quarter and go around the corner, it's just a few midgets lurching around in make-up.
Such a shame, because the rote elements are assembled for an epic tale of zombie kick-assery. After a perfunctory establishing scene of former UN employee Brad Pitt with his family that establishes, well, he has a family, the movie hits the ground running. Zombies invade Philadelphia without warning and without reason, barely allowing Pitta and his family to escape. Finding his way on a UN vessel, safe in the middle of the ocean from the outbreak, he's informed the only way his family will continue enjoying these comforts is if he trots around the world on a quest for the outbreak's origin. If he can track this mysterious "Patient Zero," there might be hope for a cure.
Romero zombies slowly ambling around, these ain't. Forster's zombies rush you before you even realize, zipping around the screen as if "Yakety Sax" plays in their earbuds. Individual scenes are effective - the initial attack plunks us in the middle of sustained, unwavering terror, as Pitt and his family don't understand what is happening or why, only that if they don't move, they will die. We witness the horror, the confusion, and the sheer panic of seeing every human around you suddenly wiped out.
If only Forster sustained this feeling of large-scale dread. If only he took a step back and recognized the sheer enormity of what's at stake - the world is coming to a friggin' end! Instead, by shoehorning in Pitt's personal quest, Forster and his writers J. Michael Straczynski and Matthew Michael Carnahan awkwardly try to minimize the action while expanding it too. Imagine your local Action News team fighting to share the same studio with CNN.
As strategies go, their's isn't entirely off-base. Granting us an entry point into chaos too large to comprehend can allow personal investment. We witness a clear dramatic arc, and it provides a guiding point within the destruction. It gives us something tangible to care about. Turn to Spielberg's "War Of The Worlds" for a decent textbook on pulling this off.
Thing is, Spielberg provided a soul beneath the veneer. His characters showed personality, flaws, concerns. You felt like their fate mattered. Forster's characters are either targets or cyphers. They exist either to get mowed down or voice plot devices the screenwriters can't step on screen and say themselves without a SAG card. For all its computer generated zombie hordes and PG-13 blood, "World War Z" is a curiously soulless affair.
If only the zombies in this movie sought heart instead of brains. They'd be defeated in a day.
Most curious is the third act. Notorious reports of rewrites and reshoots, essentially leaving Forster to scrap the original ending and start from scratch, prepare us for an unholy mess, some blatant piece of studio meddling nonsense. And it is...but not in the ways we expect. The finale of "World War Z" ironically works as the best thing in the movie because it so clearly stands apart from the rest.
Until then, Forster treats us with a nonstop barrage of stuff. Uninvolving, unmotivated stuff. And if it's not boring, that's only because he grants us no time to be bored. Spoilers withheld, though, the movie makes a hard right turn near the end into an alternate timeline version of "World War Z." It becomes intimate. Involving. A select few characters in tiny rooms, with a clear goal in mind, shot clearly and elegantly, cranking up the suspense.
I'm torn. This demonstrates a complete lack of faith in the filmmaking choices already made - if you're gonna shoot the most epic zombie story ever, at least follow that through to its natural progression. At the same time, the finale kinda works as a mea culpa for all that came before - "We only had seven weeks for reshoots. We know. We're sorry."
So where does that leave us? We have a hollow lead played admittedly well by Pitt, as his only requirement was showing up. We have a plot that plays like some lame Encyclopedia Brown story as he zips around from place to place ("Come see Brad Pitt learn a new fact just in time!"). We have an emotional connection bearing all the weight of a video game on your old dorm room TV.
One thing could save this movie, and one thing along: For God's sake, shoot it well!. Mindless chaos still holds value if we enjoy it, and to enjoy action, we need some kind of grounding. We need a sense of geography, where characters are in relation to each other. Clear, steady shots to see what's happening.
We're not talking personal style. We're talking the basics. Knowing where to put the camera so the audience's brain and eyes don't give up. Forster's method of directing action feels akin to crop dusting: Cover the whole field and let the rest sort itself out. In one key moment, a character's hand is chopped off, but it's a full ten seconds before we even realize it.
When will filmmakers learn that shaky cam achieves the exact opposite of its goal? Instead of immersing us in the action by making us feel how it feels, it pulls us out because all we feel is dizzy.
Some movies are frustrating simply because they suck. "World War Z" is frustrating precisely because of how much it shouldn't have sucked. After setting out to craft the zombie movie to end all zombie movies, Pitt and Forster found themselves with a zombie movie that thankfully just ends.
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