World War Z (2013)

United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.

Director:

Marc Forster

Writers:

Matthew Michael Carnahan (screenplay), Drew Goddard (screenplay),

Stars:

Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz

3 wins & 18 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Brad Pitt	...	Gerry Lane
Mireille Enos	...	Karin Lane
Daniella Kertesz	...	Segen
James Badge Dale	...	Captain Speke
Ludi Boeken	...	Jurgen Warmbrunn
Matthew Fox	...	Parajumper
Fana Mokoena	...	Thierry Umutoni
David Morse	...	Ex-CIA Agent
Elyes Gabel	...	Andrew Fassbach
Peter Capaldi	...	W.H.O. Doctor
Pierfrancesco Favino	...	W.H.O. Doctor
Ruth Negga	...	W.H.O. Doctor
Moritz Bleibtreu	...	W.H.O. Doctor
Sterling Jerins	...	Constance Lane
Abigail Hargrove	...	Rachel Lane

Storyline

Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies. After barely escaping the chaos, Lane is persuaded to go on a mission to investigate this disease. What follows is a perilous trek around the world where Lane must brave horrific dangers and long odds to find answers before human civilization falls.

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Plot Keywords:

zombie | helicopter | disease | chaos | vaccine | 

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Taglines:

Remember Philly!

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Certificate:

14A

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official Facebook [Brazil]

Country:

USA Malta

Language:

English Spanish Hebrew Arabic

Release Date:

21 June 2013 (Canada)

Also Known As:

Guerra mundial Z

Filming Locations:

Lulworth Cove, Weymouth, Dorset, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

$190,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$66,411,834 (USA) (21 June 2013)

Gross:

$202,351,611 (USA) (4 October 2013)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures, Skydance Productions, Hemisphere Media Capital

Technical Specs

Runtime:

116 min 123 min (Unrated Edition)

Sound Mix:

SDDS Datasat Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In a high-six-figure deal, Paramount Pictures acquired screen rights to the Max Brooks novel "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War." Brooks' follow-up to the satirical "The Zombie Survival Guide" sparked a bidding battle, with Warner Brothers & Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way on the other side of the table from Paramount & Brad Pitt's Plan B.

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Goofs

In the exterior shot of the medical facility in Wales at night, the soundtrack has cicadas chirping quietly in the background. There are no cicadas in Wales.

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Quotes

Andrew Fassbach: Mother Nature is a serial killer. No one's better. Or more creative. Like all serial killers, she can't help the urge to want to get caught. What good are all those brilliant crimes if no one takes the credit? So she leaves crumbs. Now the hard part, why you spend a decade in school, is seeing the crumbs. But the clue's there. Sometimes the thing you thought was the most brutal aspect of the virus, turns out to be the chink in its armor. And she loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths. ...

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Crazy Credits

The ending Paramount logo is shown in the same dark blueish color from the opening logos.

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Connections

Referenced in The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXIV (2013)

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Soundtracks

Follow Me
Written by Matthew Bellamy
Performed by Muse
Courtesy of Warner Music U.K. Ltd.
By Arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User Reviews

A zombie film that lacks bite

It seems unfair to criticise the film for not being like its source material given that it obviously didn't try to be but I'm going to start by bringing that up anyway. The book had so many sequences that could have been turned into amazing set-pieces in a film and yet not one of them were used. The book also had some neat ideas about how a global outbreak and response play out. What might work? What would catastrophically fail? What would the cost be? Not one of these ideas were explored or even alluded to and there seems absolutely no reason why this was the case.

It might have been okay to abandon these ideas if the film had some ideas of its own to explore or at least play out but it doesn't. Instead we follow Brad Pitt and Brad Pitt's baggage through a few set-pieces as he first escapes from and then looks into an outbreak of zombies. There's little else to say about it than that.

The first major problem came down to the zombies themselves. For a zombie film to get that right is critical and World War Z stumbled pretty badly here. The physical appearance of the zombies is a clear problem. Given the film's penchant for shying away from blood and gore to keep its rating audience-friendly, the only things that separates these zombies from regular people are milky eyes, grey skin, and a tendency to bare and snap their teeth. They're not the bloodthirsty creatures at various stages of decay and ruin that feature in most zombie films. This is generally fine in close-ups but at a distance it's impossible to tell the zombies apart from regular people. And when most of your action scenes involve panicking people running away from what are allegedly zombies, having them pretty much indistinct from each other means you never get much of an inclination about the level of the threat or even what's going on.

A possible solution would have been for the film to opt for the shambling moaning Romero-esque zombies of the book. Instead of running and tackling, having a slowly ever-advancing tide of danger would have turned the zombies into something to be feared rather than something to try and spot in a crowd.

But even later when the film displays zombies in their 'docile' state its shown how little the film-makers understand how zombies are supposed to work. The jerking around and screeches were meant to be threatening and they are anything but. They are borderline slapstick and certainly comical judging by the outbreaks of laughter in the audience at my screening. They clicked their teeth together as if they enjoyed the sound. They repeatedly hit their heads against the wall in a way that was meant to seem deranged but just came across as silly. They spun and jerked around leading to a hilarious sequence of Pitt and two others essentially playing "Red Light/Green Light" with a snarling zombie. Nothing about these zombies seemed to work as intended.

The second major problem came down to the complete lack of weight or tension. Brad Pitt isn't the type of actor anyone expects to be in danger, at least not when he's in an action film, so already there's the knowledge that he's fairly safe. But added to that, his character is a practically invulnerable bad-ass UN investigator whose field knowledge and ingenuity makes him able to adapt to any situation. His 'baggage', as I referred to them earlier, is played at first by his wife and two daughters as well as an orphan boy - far too cute to ever come into real harm in a film like this. The baggage is then played by a doctor and a team of soldiers who are so bereft of personality and character that there is no reason to care about them. He then teams up with a young Israeli soldier who is the closest person aside from Pitt to qualify to be called a character but unfortunately she doesn't seem to serve any purpose. His final baggage comes in the form of a team of WHO doctors. I won't say anything about them aside from pointing out that all four are named in the credits as "W.H.O. Doctor" despite being a key part of around a quarter of the film.

Though I wouldn't recommend the film, to its credit it managed to attain a level of being entertaining and it never embarrassed itself, (despite a squeamish bit of product placement.) It was clearly let down by a few core problems and while certainly not a good film I'd feel a bit mean if I were to label it 'bad'. I'm disappointed that it painted itself as a zombie film for zombie fans while clearly being a toothless blockbuster to appeal to a broader audience, (however understandable that move may be from a film studio's perspective given the production problems and cost blow-out.) For this reason maybe the film tripped up and fell flat on its face but as it dragged itself to the finish line I'm willing to applaud it for that at least.

I suppose all I can do it sit here and try to imagine what might have been...