July | 2013 | The Visionary Film Fanatic

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale

It has been a summer where I haven’t seen that many movies and have worked a lot so when I finally was able to see this movie I was utterly surprised. From the trailer I thought it would just be another big blockbuster that didn’t really do much for the genre but boy was I wrong, it is by far one of the most interesting takes on the zombie genre. You have a very intellectual look at these creatures and how they affect the culture that we live in. We don’t really get to see the start of the outbreak or how people originally deal with what happens, usually the hero wakes up from a coma or specific events lead them to miss the outbreak. It is a nice change of pace for a movie to focus directly with the outbreak instead of dealing with what is to come. Brad Pitt serves the story well, I think that he fits completely into the role that he played and even made the movie even more enjoyable.

Brad Pitt stars as an ex-United Nations employee racing around the globe in a bid to halt a worldwide zombie pandemic in Marc Forster‘s sprawling adaptation of Max Brooks‘ bestselling novel of the same name. Retired U.N. investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his family are sitting in what appears to be a typical Philadelphia traffic jam when helicopters began to circle ominously overhead, and an explosion throws the city into panic. In the blink of an eye, the streets are consumed by chaos. When Gerry learns that the catalyst for the turmoil is a highly contagious virus that transforms those who contract it into rampaging maniacs, and that legions of the infected are growing on all continents, he agrees to join his former colleagues in discovering the source of the rampant plague so that his wife and two daughters will be guaranteed safety aboard a UN fleet in the Atlantic Ocean. Upon tracing a crucial e-mail to a U.S. military base in South Korea, Gerry learns that the infection has spread more rapidly than anyone realizes. Although a subsequent trip to Jerusalem, where the government has constructed a massive wall to keep the public safe, initially offers hope that the growing horde can be kept at bay, an unexpected breach sends Gerry back into the sky in search of patient zero. Just when Gerry thinks he’s traced the origins of the virus, however, the unthinkable happens. Subsequently stranded in Cardiff with a fearless Israeli soldier, Gerry quickly makes his way to a World Health Organization outpost where the few remaining scientists have hit a dead end in their search for a cure. But the struggle is far from over, and after recalling an unusual scene witnessed in Jerusalem, Gerry prepares to make a leap of faith that could prevent the downfall of humanity.

I loved how it spans not only the world but societies that have developed different ways of dealing with the outbreak that has just occurred. At one point we make it Jerusalem we’re they have completely blocked off their city from the world and selectively let people into the city. It worked up until they started making noise and having the zombies make a makeshift ladder of pure bodies to climb over the wall, which looked bad in the trailers but actually was pretty cool on screen. What this movie has done is make something completely new and different and it is by far the most enjoyable zombie film I’ve seen in a while.

8.5 out of 10