I haven't read the book. I hear it's very good, and that it's supposed to be THE zombie book. The book supposedly elevated zombies and their associated tropes into "serious literature", and so does the movie attempt to elevate them into "serious filmmaking". It doesn't work, and you have to look no further than the bloody script to understand why. Here you have a team of four people who worked totally and entirely alone on the script, each with their own ideas about what the movie should be about and feel like.
The movie can't decide if it's a disaster film, an action-adventure flick, a conspiracy thriller or a horror movie. It starts out as one, switches to another, forgets the previous two and ends on a radically different note. It goes for grabs in all directions and in the end you're left with nothing much of anything. It's a sloppy, incoherent jumble of tone, style, rhythm and genre, with some good dispersed ideas but no soul to speak of.
We have J. Michael Straczynski, who took Max Brooks' book and tried to join all the loose narrative into some sort of political conspiracy thriller. Then that gets more or less scrapped, and Matthew Michael Carnahan writes over parts of it, basically painting action scenes over it. Then we get one bloke from Lost - Damon Lindelof - to rewrite the ending AFTER they've already shot it. But he doesn't finish it, and so they bring in ANOTHER bloke from Lost, Drew Goddard, to finish it. Would you believe me if I told you, you can practically see where one bloke stopped writing and the next bloke took it up? This movie is incoherent from the inside-out. It's like they rebooted the damn shot every time they had to shoot a new scene, or the act was over.
I'll go into the pros and cons now. There're some minor spoilers, but nothing you wouldn't find in your average review, I promise.
Captcha: Winter is coming
Actually it is, at least down here.
The movie can't decide if it's a disaster film, an action-adventure flick, a conspiracy thriller or a horror movie. It starts out as one, switches to another, forgets the previous two and ends on a radically different note. It goes for grabs in all directions and in the end you're left with nothing much of anything. It's a sloppy, incoherent jumble of tone, style, rhythm and genre, with some good dispersed ideas but no soul to speak of.
We have J. Michael Straczynski, who took Max Brooks' book and tried to join all the loose narrative into some sort of political conspiracy thriller. Then that gets more or less scrapped, and Matthew Michael Carnahan writes over parts of it, basically painting action scenes over it. Then we get one bloke from Lost - Damon Lindelof - to rewrite the ending AFTER they've already shot it. But he doesn't finish it, and so they bring in ANOTHER bloke from Lost, Drew Goddard, to finish it. Would you believe me if I told you, you can practically see where one bloke stopped writing and the next bloke took it up? This movie is incoherent from the inside-out. It's like they rebooted the damn shot every time they had to shoot a new scene, or the act was over.
I'll go into the pros and cons now. There're some minor spoilers, but nothing you wouldn't find in your average review, I promise.
- The first thing I can think of is the final act. It's really that good. Classy suspense right there.
- There's some interesting little concepts I picked up here and there. Early in the movie there's a nifty scene that shows us exactly how much time it takes to "zombify", and it's done in a pretty clever and ominous way. Pitt takes smart precautions, like duct-taping a magazine around his forearm in case of biting. And I'm always interested to see how a new zombie movie deals with tropes like "does hacking the infected limb stop the infection?" and stuff like that.
- The zombies themselves aren't very impressive, but I liked what an unstoppable force of power they become in the movie. I usually call BS on movies where a fully armed task force gets overpowered by zombies, but in this movie I bought that every single time.
- Some loose scenes are very good. The initial disaster plays out nicely, even though it looks a LOT like a 9/11 double-take. Is it just me or suddenly every movie to feature an attack on a US city has a 9/11 thing going on? Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, now this...
- There's some interesting little concepts I picked up here and there. Early in the movie there's a nifty scene that shows us exactly how much time it takes to "zombify", and it's done in a pretty clever and ominous way. Pitt takes smart precautions, like duct-taping a magazine around his forearm in case of biting. And I'm always interested to see how a new zombie movie deals with tropes like "does hacking the infected limb stop the infection?" and stuff like that.
- The zombies themselves aren't very impressive, but I liked what an unstoppable force of power they become in the movie. I usually call BS on movies where a fully armed task force gets overpowered by zombies, but in this movie I bought that every single time.
- Some loose scenes are very good. The initial disaster plays out nicely, even though it looks a LOT like a 9/11 double-take. Is it just me or suddenly every movie to feature an attack on a US city has a 9/11 thing going on? Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, now this...
- You know the big zombie stampede scenes from the trailers? Those are about the most visually impressive takes from the movie. Everything else is poorly lit, poorly cut shaky-cam stock.
- Each act in this movie seems to be divorced from each other in terms of tone, style, rhythm and even genre. The movie starts out as an OK disaster film, switches to BS shaky-cam action-adventure scenes, then goes into full-fledged horror/suspense for the final act. The third act is pretty good and makes everything else feel like the mediocre crap it is. But the movie is just too incoherent from one minute to the next.
- Everybody in this movie is boring, boring, boring, beginning with Pitt's character and his sadsack family. He never gets a personality beyond being weary and overly determined. His wife and kids are just there to act asbaggage motivation for him, without there being any meaningful relationship between them. There're a few other characters that crop now and then in the movie, but they hardly do anything other than pose and provide some shallow coloring to the cast. Nobody to care for or fear for, except for Pitt, because he's the star.
- Each act in this movie seems to be divorced from each other in terms of tone, style, rhythm and even genre. The movie starts out as an OK disaster film, switches to BS shaky-cam action-adventure scenes, then goes into full-fledged horror/suspense for the final act. The third act is pretty good and makes everything else feel like the mediocre crap it is. But the movie is just too incoherent from one minute to the next.
- Everybody in this movie is boring, boring, boring, beginning with Pitt's character and his sadsack family. He never gets a personality beyond being weary and overly determined. His wife and kids are just there to act as
Captcha: Winter is coming
Actually it is, at least down here.
