Netflix Zombie Epic Is One Of Hollywood’s Worst Adaptations

World War Z‘s structure makes a faithful movie adaptation of the 2006 novel impossible. For those of you who haven’t read the book, let me break it down. Author Max Brooks wrote World War Z as an oral history, meaning the entire book is made up of interviews. These interviews between an unnamed interviewer and numerous survivors of the fictional “Zombie War” slowly paint a picture of the global reaction to a pandemic a million times worse than COVID-19.

World War Z takes the book’s nameless interviewer and turns him into Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a former United Nations investigator. When the zombie apocalypse starts, Lane has two goals: to protect his family, and to jet around the world trying to figure out how to stop the zombie plague. He succeeds at both tasks.

The End.

Several of the novel’s vignettes would make for an entertaining film on their own, but adapting the whole book would require something long-form. Maybe a limited series or a podcast. What Brad Pitt and his Plan B production company did instead was take the name World War Z and slap it on a toothless PG-13 movie full of CGI zombie hordes that act like an ant colony for some reason.

I’m sorry, but no self-respecting zombie movie—which admittedly World War Z is not—should shoot for a PG-13 rating. Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts—I’ve seen them all work in a PG/PG-13 framework. Zombies though? Absolutely Not.

We’re talking about a creature whose main reason for existing is tearing humans open and consuming their flesh. Under certain circumstances, I’d even accept brain-eating. How are you supposed to make any of that family-friendly?

The answer is you don’t.

World War Z is a largely bloodless affair. Most of the zombie carnage happens in wide crowd shots and off-screen. When they actually show someone turning, it happens lickety-split with none of the slow agony that usually accompanies a zombie transformation. The zombies in World War Z function like the armies of orcs in the Lord of the Rings films; they’re giant waves of cannon fodder that exist to be mowed down.

In the novel World War Z, the zombies are defeated through knowledge and cooperation. Eventually, the world’s militaries figured out the best way to combat the zombies and set to work. There is no cure or magic bullet, just lots of hard work.

The movie takes a different approach. Apparently, the zombie virus is sentient enough to realize that eating sick people won’t allow it to spread. With that in mind, the World Health Organization decides to infect everyone with a curable pathogen so the zombies will stop eating everyone.

This is why I personally hate the idea of a virus causing the dead to walk. It’s as bad as treating vampirism like a virus. Keep your science away from my fictional monsters. It weakens them as a threat.

World War Z was a difficult production. The movie took years to develop, and extensive reshoots caused the budget to balloon past the $190 million mark. Despite that, the movie grossed over $540 million worldwide and is, sadly, the highest-grossing zombie film of all time.

When it comes to World War Z the book, I highly recommend checking it out. Though I haven’t heard it myself, the audio book is supposed to be excellent. As far as World War Z the film, I can’t really find much to recommend it. It’s not the worst zombie movie I’ve ever seen, so I guess that’s a plus.

GFR SCORE

Oh, who am I kidding? I barely made it through the whole movie. But art is subjective, so you might as well go ahead and watch World War Z on Netflix. Maybe you’ll have a better time than I did.