Trailer Trashin’: It’s the Running of the Zombies in World War Z

We’re almost halfway through the month of November, and into the season of year-end movies and Oscar hopefuls – check out Skyfall if you haven’t, it’s awesome – and that means that early trailers for next year’s big movies will start rolling in. This week’s installment of Trailer Trashin’ conducts a post-mortem on our first look at the upcoming zombie epic World War Z.

Premise: United Nations worker Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) travels the globe searching for information that can stop the deadly zombie outbreak that is bringing down nations.

My take: The film adaptation of Max Brooks’ 2006 post-apocalyptic horror novel World War Z has had a long, difficult journey to movie screens. A long development period, a ballooning budget, multiple script doctors being brought in, extensive reshoots, and the release date being pushed back have all cast a cloud over the project. Now the first trailer for the film has arrived, and while it looks okay, there’s no hook to pull me in and put it on my “must see” list.

In terms of the cast, the big focus is obviously on Brad Pitt as UN employee Gerry Lane. I really like Pitt as an actor, because he always seems to look for really interesting projects to attach himself to, and he also puts real effort into creating his characters, instead of just playing variations on a single persona. We also see Mireille Enos, who played the lead on AMC’s The Killing, as Karin Lane, Gerry’s wife; I’m curious to see how much of a role she has to play. Other notable names in the cast who aren’t seen here are James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox, Bryan Cranston, and David Morse.

I will admit, I am impressed by the scope and scale they’re going for here. The truck plowing through the city street, the planes and choppers, and the people on the aircraft carrier are all much bigger things than what we’ve seen in previous zombie apocalypse films. And I really like how they’re mixing up how the zombies are acting. Rather than just the standard pack of feral humans, they behave more like a swarm of giant army ants. The final shot where the zombies are forming a mountain to reach the top of the dam was pretty chilling.

However, as impressive as a lot of this looks, there are things that bug me. I’m not sure how much of a strong through-line the story is going to have, and I’m kind of expecting just a pseudo-travelogue showing Gerry traveling from place to place and seeing how the zombie apocalypse is affecting things. And there is way too much shaky-cam in the action scenes – this was a problem with Quantum of Solace (2008), Marc Forster’s previous film, and it’s very noticeable here. Some shaky-cam can be effective in creating a visceral “you-are-there” feeling, but when it’s used to the extent it is here, where you never get a really clear, close up shot of the zombies, it’s just annoying. Finally, there’s the fact that a lot of the CG zombie shots we see here look kind of rough, like they were in such a rush to get the trailer out that they couldn’t wait for finished effects shots.

Ultimately, what we have here is the proverbial mixed bag – the scale and the animalistic zombies are cool, but the overused shaky-cam and lack of clear narrative spine bring things down. Personally, it’s a movie I do want to see at some point, but unless the reviews are good, I’ll probably just wait to see World War Z on Netflix.

ANTICIPATION: I’m somewhat interested, but probably not enough to see it in theaters.

Release Date: June 21^st, 2013

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Lucy Aharish, Julia Levy-Boeken, Matthew Fox, Elyes Gabel, Bryan Cranston, David Morse, and Abigail Hargrove
Director: Marc Forster
Writers: Matthew Michael Carnahan