Before watching the movie:
I have a fairly clear memory of this movie’s promotion as being the point where it seemed that any big zombie movie needs to have a thing that you’ve never seen zombies do before. They were talking about how after Fast Zombies, the new innovation of this movie is climbing/swarming zombies. I don’t know what else can be done to make zombies more threatening now that they can be fast and crash over you like a tide and still be nonsapient enough to be playing the trope straight, but if somebody figures it out, they’ll probably have the next blockbuster zombie movie, or at least that was the impression the marketing for WWZ gave me.
After watching the movie:
Gerry Lane quit his investigator job with the UN to spend more time with his wife and two daughters and also over vague disagreements with how the job was to be done. His old UN contact Thierry, the Deputy Secretary-General, calls him and demands he come in immediately, there’s a situation they need his unique expertise in, and they will ensure his family is safe. They immediately get stuck in the traffic jam that was Philadelphia, until they see a stampede of approaching zombies. In the chaos, Gerry notes that it only takes 12 seconds for a bitten person to turn. When they reach Newark, they shelter with a family while they wait for helicopter extraction, and while their host family chose not to go with them, the son Tomas escapes the zombie hordes attracted by the helicopter noise and joins Gerry’s family. Joining the UN convoy in the Atlantic, Gerry is tasked with escorting a virologist to a US Army camp in South Korea, the origin of the earliest communication mentioning zombies and their best lead, and if Gerry refuses, his family will be put off the boat. On arrival in South Korea, the virologist promptly shoots himself dead by accident, leaving Gerry as the only UN official on the case. The soldiers at the camp don’t have much to tell him, but a rogue CIA agent they have arrested reveals that Mossad knew something was coming early enough to seal off Israel, and Gerry goes off to follow the next breadcrumb.
Gerry’s family is probably what makes it most apparent how this plot is split into distinct chapters and becomes different movies in each locale it moves to. In the US, his family’s safety is paramount, then they get out and they aren’t really relevant to the story because they’re just sheltering on an aircraft carrier, and then when Gerry arrives in Wales and is presumed dead, they’re sent to a much less safe refugee camp since they’re no longer useful to the military and we don’t even see them once they leave the boat. I liked the “apocalyptic family survival” section but then they’re kind of a burden to the story after that, making it especially unbalanced. It wants to be a disaster movie, a war movie, and a horror movie, and I’m not really sure a theatrical film was the best medium to adapt this book into, especially with the heavy pressure in a Hollywood movie to have a single protagonist through the whole thing. I’m not even sure an “investigator” like whatever Gerry does is actually a thing the UN has.
Well, I don’t think I can leave the Israel chapter without comment. In light of real-world actions taken by the Israeli state throughout its very short history, I found it highly unlikely they would actually take in refugees through the wall, but I figured maybe it had something to do with the novel policy they explain of requiring someone to work to confirm the most unlikely rumors so that Israel would never get caught by surprise again. Maybe if they had that policy in effect they would realize that zealously bombing civilians is the exact opposite of a good strategy to eliminate terrorism. Then it quickly transpires that being gracious hosts to their displaced Palestinian neighbors (again, entirely contrary to what they have demonstrated they would do in any circumstances) turns out to be the direct cause of their containment breach. There is no way that depiction wasn’t carefully considered. But then I’m sure this was made with significant cooperation from the US Department of Defense, so even though the UN is foregrounded, it’s really mostly what serves the US agenda.
I totally forgot that Peter Capaldi is in this, and moreover when he got cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who people had a good laugh that his most recent role on IMDB was “WHO Doctor”. I feel like his part is more memorable than it should be and that’s not entirely because I recognized him. He’s helped by being in the last section and so the freshest in my mind. The Seigen from the IDF (she’s only addressed by her rank) is also a standout part, at least once she has reason to not just be one more soldier. Hardly anybody else is all that memorable, and aside from his tough guy shoulder length hair that probably includes Brad Pitt.
This succeeds at being a new kind of zombie movie, and it does almost as well as 2012 at feeling global in scope. The characters aren’t as important as the spectacle, and they’re kind of left behind by the scale of events. I didn’t read up much on the book but it sounds like it’s assembled in such a way that doesn’t need the throughline of a single protagonist who has to be swept through the whole thing, and it’s probably better off for that. I guess what I’m saying is it’s kind of in a weird place where it either has not enough consistency or too much.
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