He’s a very pragmatic, goal oriented individual who sees what’s in front of him, accepts it-in this case, the walking dead-and copes as best he can. Gerry bounds all over the world, from one decimated city to another, in search of patient zero, and hopefully a cure. The one thing that remains-aside from the zombies of course-is a globetrotting plot structure. It’s more like reading an anthology of vignettes rather than a novel.
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The story is framed as a series of survivor’s tales collected after the zombie wars. His approach gives these incidents much more impact than a constant barrage of jittery camerawork.īrooks’ book doesn’t lend itself to easy translation from page to screen. And for his part, Forster has the good sense not to linger too long, lest this tactic prove overwhelming. You feel the chaos and disorientation of the characters involved in the melee, and in these moments World War Z creates a very visceral experience. Not nearly as intense or oppressive as a film like Cloverfied, or most found footage horror joints, these scenes throw you right in the middle of the madness. When action does erupt, it may be too shaky for some viewers.
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There are some tried and true, not to mention worn out, horror tropes at work here-like dark, empty hallways full sinister, disembodied sounds and snarls-but Forster does a strong job throughout of pulling the strings and cranking up the pressure. After the briefest of set ups-Pitt’s character Gerry Lane has a perfect life, two perfect daughters, a perfect wife, and just left his job of being awesome for the United Nations, where he went into every dangerous backwater hole you can name-the whole world goes to hell. One of the best things World War Z accomplishes is the balance of tension and action. In the film these images are harrowing because they feel very real. From a far away vantage point it looks like no big deal, until the true destructive force becomes clear, and you witness the ruination of everything in its path. You can’t help but be reminded of footage of flash floods or a tsunami.
Watching an overhead shot of a horde of zombie pouring into an open space is like watching water move, filling every available space, backing up when the tide comes to a bottleneck.
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Mother nature is also referred to a brutally proficient serial killer, by the way. The film explicitly states that these creatures are the spawn of mother nature. World War Z plays the best-of-both-worlds game and actually pulls it off, using fast zombies as well as they ever have been.
There are instances where fast zombies have been effective, 28 Days Later and Zombieland come to mind, but this gradual unavoidability is one of the chief elements that draws me towards the genre. You can chip away a piece here and there, but that’s only a band-aid, a stopgap. Zombies are a force of nature, like a creeping glacier you can’t do anything about. They don’t have any of that baggage, they just keep coming. You get tired, you run out of food and bullets, you have emotions to screw things up. They’re frightening because of inherent inevitability. My argument has always been that slow zombies are scary despite the fact that they can’t chase you down in a straight foot race. Zombie purists-a group I generally count myself among-have issue with the modern trend of fast zombies, undead corpses that can run at full speed.