World War Z: Globe Trotting Zombie Thriller
Starring Brad Pitt as former U.N. employee and current globe-trotting zombie avoider Gerry Lane, World War Z is an action packed thriller. There are several moments of surprise that happen without foreshadowing, and as the zombies pile up, they get stronger.
Because the film is told from Lane’s point of view, it is able to keep the secrets of what is going on in the world and reveal them slowly. There isn’t a lot of exposition, and the film starts at the ground level of the zombie apocalypse. Lane and his family try to escape the zombies as they take over, and chaos ensues. It is the evacuation and the chase scenes that create tension. These zombies are super human fast. Israel remains protected because it shut its walls before the zombie plague spread. The apocalypse gets as bad for the rest of the world because “the problem with most people is that they can’t believe something will happen until it already has,” and most countries do not have a tenth man, who is the person who disagrees with the nine who are sure of what is going on. In this case, nine thought the idea of zombies was a hoax or exaggerated; the tenth asked what if it really was zombies and got the government to operate under that assumption. The first lesson surely applies to climate change. The second just asks people to consider the fact that the person who may seem crazy really isn’t. (After all, history is full of examples of people who didn’t believe what was “common sense” at the time and were later proved correct.) The third lesson that one could take from World War Z is that sometimes people must embrace death in order to face death. Of course, no one has to take anything intellectual away from the movie. It works as an action-packed thrill ride. |
|