World War Z (2013)

directed by: Marc Forster
written by: J. Michael Straczynski, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof,
based on the novel ' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War', by Max Brooks
photographed by: Ben Seresin and Robert Richardson
music by: Marco Beltrami
edited by: Roger Barton and Matt Chesse
stars: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz
imdb

World War Z (hereafter WWZ) is a pandemic movie where the illness happens to be the zombie virus. And pretty fast zombies, by the way, fast in turning into zombies, and even faster when they have become zombies. Thanks to that, WWZ brings some of the most cinematic images of the past decade. The first ten minutes of the movie are simply electrifying, perfectly transmitting the shock that such event would cause on people. We wrote recently about the (failed) straight-to-the-point beginning of Underwater, and it makes you think, that maybe they were trying to imitate the effective beginning of WWZ.

WWZ skilfully combines your compulsory pandemic movie plot (looking for patient zero), with your zombie survival, and something that I don't remember seeing before (although I must confess that I am not a zombie genre fan) the zombie massive and frantic attacks. These are not like your slow hordes from The Walking Dead, these are swarms of zombies. Basicly, these generate some of the best moments of the movie: the abovementioned beginning, and the Jerusalem part. Here is an interview with Jessica Norman, VFX supervisor, on how the Jerusalem and several other scenes were filmed. If you have already seen it, you certainly remember this moment.

WWZ has some weaker passages, but clearly stands as an above-average zombie movie, with some really remarkable moments. Not to include any spoiler, we will just say that the 'weakness' of the pandemic is quite original (although there are doubts about its long-term effectiveness).

A project for a sequel has been around since WWZ came out, by recently we got to know that it has been ancelled recently. This was a specially sad news because it was going to be directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, The social network).