Review #139: World War Z (2013)


This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #25- World War Z (2013)

The first thing that struck me as odd was how incredibly bloodless this movie was. For a genre that's all about blood, gore, and dismemberment, seeing a zombie outbreak with barely a drop of blood (from zombies, anyway) was VERY weird. I did like how the early portion of the film showed varying takes on how people react in a crisis- a junkie shows some real compassion, and a cop ignores straight-up murder in order to serve his own self-interests. It was an interesting way to get me invested in the story being told that I hadn't considered.

Unfortunately, that investment didn't pay dividends. The most damning criticism I can give of this movie is that it's aggressively mediocre. I didn't feel like it did anything particularly new, I didn't feel like it did anything particularly well, but I didn't feel like it did anything particularly badly either. This movie clearly had a huge budget behind it- every scene was some gigantic set piece with tons of consideration and lots of bigger-than-I-would-expect actors- but at the end of the day, I barely remember any individual scene or any individual moment. I've praised horror movies in the past for being less about the horror and more about the story of a father trying to reunite with his kids or whatever, but this time around I didn't feel like any of the non-zombie story was actually compelling and the zombie story even less so. I honestly feel like this movie's big budget may have been its worst enemy; they had the liberty to go anywhere and do anything they wanted, so that's what they built the story around instead of building it around a good, fresh idea and executing it well.

That's not to say there's nothing good or original in this movie. I've never seen a zombie outbreak on a plane, for example. I also liked the imagery of the giant festival in Jerusalem getting attacked by a massive horde of zombies, but it was a little undercut by the fact that the zombies seemed to be acting as a hive mind, working in perfect tandem with one another towards a goal and even self-sacrificing in order to help other zombies reach new victims. It really made the whole thing seem less like a consistent horror trope, and more like "You know what would look cool? If this happened" which kind of seems to be this movie's whole schtick.

It wasn't the worst movie I've seen this month but I don't plan on ever watching it again.

Overall Rating: 4/10 Grenades on a Plane

Winner of this Movie: Brad Pitt, obviously. This was apparently the highest-grossing film of his career at the time!

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