With a $200 million budget, World War Z is the most expensive zombie film ever made. And although it deserves to be remembered for more than this stark statistic, its reputation and box office potential may already be determined by the well-documented production troubles that have granted the film an unwelcome notoriety. Last-minute rewrites, an unfinished script, all scenes shot in Moscow dropped from the final cut, Hungarian counter-terrorism customs officers revealing that the film's prop firearms were, in fact, fully functional...such setbacks not only bumped up the budget from its initial $125m estimate but they also pushed back the film's release date from December 2012 to June 2013. So, now that it has finally arrived, is it the greatest zombie film ever to grace our screens? Well, no. But nor is it the disaster that many critics are claiming it to be. Instead, it's a fast-paced and surprisingly intelligent drama/horror hybrid that boasts some thrillingly tense chase sequences, spectacular special effects and a solid, unshowy performance from its lead role (and co-producer) Brad Pitt. The actor plays Gerry Lane, a former United Nations worker who is called upon to investigate the pandemic that has already claimed half the human race. And director Marc Forster gets to dust off his globe-trotting skills (last seen in Quantum of Solace), while ensuring that we're never kept in one country for too long. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion was a zombie film without the zombies; a hermetically-sealed, hypothetical horror that swapped high-paced action scenes for shots of scientists squabbling over each other to find a cause and a cure. And a straightforward adaptation of World War Z threatened to be more of the same; with its epistolary concept - what would essentially be a two-hour interview - not being especially conducive to the words 'summer blockbuster'. But then, how best to tackle Max Brooks' 2006 source novel: a cult favourite that pieced together transcripts between a UN employee and the eyewitness accounts of the world's survivors? Perhaps a faux-documentary, with all action shots confined to flashbacks? Let's not forget just how much money was spent here. And so the gentle hum of the recording tape was drowned out by the cacophony of helicopters, plane crashes, grenades and gunfire. After all, it is a
war. This may have led to a film that few fans recognized, but on the plus side, it also meant that we're waiting barely five minutes before we're thrown into the fray. And once we're in, the action rarely stops. Below are three of the film's strongest points, followed by three features that ultimately raise more questions than answers.
Contains Spoilers