World War Z is nothing that hasn't been seen before, and Brad Pitt's character's mission is entirely pointless

World War Z is nothing that hasn't been seen before, and Brad Pitt's character's mission is entirely pointless

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You can guarantee that right about now there are some very nervous executives at Paramount. Make no mistake, the good folks in Burbank have bet the farm â€" to the tune of $200m â€" on Brad Pitt’s new zombie horror flick World War Z.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. With an original budget of $125m, the adaptation of Max Brooks’ bestseller was meant to hit cinemas last year. The result was judged so terrible that seven weeks of reshoots were ordered, making World War Z almost certainly the most expensive horror movie ever made.

With the recently-dead rising up and feasting on the living, former United Nations man Gerry Lane (played by Pitt) and his family are flown to a US warship where the military is struggling to find a cure for what’s rapidly becoming a pandemic.

And so our hero sets out to find the disease’s cause and thus a cure. It’s a mission that takes him to Israel, South Korea, America and, of all places, South Wales.

George A Romero’s much underrated Day Of The Dead was perhaps the last film that had anything new to say about the living dead. Since then, the sub-genre has largely consisted of mild spins on the survivors-besieged-by-zombies template.

 

And while director Marc Foster (Quantum Of Solace) keeps things moving as Gerry flies from country to country, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before.

There are boo! moments on darkened stairwells, people running out of ammo at the most inopportune moments and machete-assisted field surgery to save the just-bitten.

Most problematic of all â€" and perhaps the fault of whoever did the rewrites â€" is that about 80 per cent of Gerry’s mission is entirely pointless.

While watching zombies scramble over the West Bank Barrier may be technically impressive, it moves the plot forward not one inch.

But however the film had turned out, it was always going to be a huge risk because the highest grossing movie of this type was Zombieland which took $100m in 2009.

Doubtless, World War Z will give filmmakers of the future plenty to, ahem, chew over.

Check out Mirror Online's pick of the ten best zombie movies ever here.

* World War Z is released today, Friday June 21 - cert 15, 116 mins

Check out Sunday Mirror film critic Mark Adams' review of World War Z by clicking here.

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