World War Z

2013 zombie mo. . .yawn. . .vie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Brad Pitt get chased by zombies during a zombie epidemic in order to figure out why there are zombies and how the zombies can be stopped before the zombies turn everybody into zombies.

This movie starts out with our characters in a traffic jam. Midway through the movie, I kind of wished I was in a traffic jam instead of watching World War Z, a been-there-done-that, redundant two hours where I would have loved to root for the zombies over the bland human characters but couldn't because the zombies weren't interesting. That scene with the traffic jam inexplicably evolves into Brad Pitt and his family zipping through the streets of New York, a ride that eventually ends with a violent-looking collision that they all walk away from just fine. The zombies all went to the same zombie acting school (because those have to exist now, right?) as the zombies in I Am Legend. They're cartoonishly fleet of foot although they do crash into walls a little too much, never before positioning themselves well so that their shoulders take the blow. The speed of the zombies and the jumpy editing really make you feel the chaos of a lot of the situations; however, I really had no interest in feeling any chaos. Parts of this were so dark and fast in places that I couldn't even figure out what the hell was going on. Will Smith's zombie pals fly from the shadows and mist and make scary screeching noises, and Brad Pitt runs around with his shoulder-length hair and eyes that let everybody know he's going to come out of this without a scratch. After a while, this movie is nothing more than shit jumping out at you while Brad Pitt is trying to whisper something that you don't really care about to somebody you probably shouldn't bother getting to know because he's not all that important to the story. All with music that would have been identical to what I would have hummed to myself while playing Here Come the Zombies in my yard as a kid. This movie is doing nothing that hasn't been done before, and it's not even doing it all that well. Why I keep subjecting myself to these zombie movies is a mystery to me.