by Jesse Miller, MoreHorror.com
As a seasoned horror film buff, World War Z just did not look like the feature made for me and between the action-oriented focus of the trailers to news of the troubled production that went over late reshoots and re-writes, the film gave the impression it was going to be a weak and messy affair.
So, let it be known that the old saying “Don’t judge a book by the cover” actually rings true as World War Z managed to be quite the thrilling – and surprisingly intense – little apocalyptic horror / action flick.
It wastes no precious time slowly building to an outbreak, choosing instead to briefly introduce the main characters we’ll follow through this nightmare before throwing them – and the audience – into complete and utter chaos as all hell breaks loose in one of the film’s thrilling and uneasy set pieces.
From there on, World War Z rarely lets up, moving from one suspenseful set piece to the next, only letting the audience a moment to catch their breath while the story plot points are delivered before rushing off into the next excruciating build of tension.
As for the infected themselves, gore hounds might be put off by the lack of the gallons of blood and fistful of gizzards (this is a PG-13 flick, after all) but surely any zombie fan can admire these ferocious buggers that swarm like army ants as they hungrily leap off rooftops and smash their heads through the windshields of cars just to get a single bite? I know I found several nice little touches to these zombies here.
So what you’ve got here is a pretty solid horror film that wonderfully builds tension and comes up with a few great ideas for the zombies themselves – but make no mistake, this is a film with a handful of unfortunate issues that pop throughout in the form of such problems as plot holes and illogical moments.
On top of that, the film suffers from one of the many re-writes it undertook and an excellent example of this would be the climax of the film – a baffling, rushed ending that feels like a huge chunk was cut out of the story and left to later open the inevitable sequel.
There’s the basic gist of the original idea for the ending floating around the web now and all I can say is that the studio should’ve gone with something far grittier and challenging than what I suppose is the less-alienating, more crowd-pleasing climax.
Other times, I was hoping to see Gerry Lane’s wife Karin (played by Mireille Enos) play a larger part in some sort of intriguing and equally intense sub plot but alas, she’s regulated to sitting by on the sidelines, though she does do a solid job with her portrayal.
Despite the problems I personally had with this, in the end World War Z is an effective, often tense and engrossing little thrill ride that surprised even me with where it went throughout it’s running time.
So don’t shrug this off or wave it away as a DVD/ Blu Ray rental, see this beast on the big screen as it’s worth the ticket price and hopefully you will find it as surprising and entertaining as I did.
Lastly, I just want to add one last thing - when the credits began to roll and the cinema lights went up, the person sitting next to me, who often amusingly swore out loud in all of the tense set pieces, grinned and said to me “I could definitely go see that again”.
I have to admit, so could I.