Analysis

World War Z is a super fast movie about a super fast virus that turns people into super fast zombies… and although the story is rather unbelieveable, it does strike a chord in many viewers.

The film begins with a rather cliché montage of news sequences. However, on a closer look, this montage actually tells us something frightening : between “telltale signs news” (weird animal behavior, surge in cases of rabies, aggressive humans), there arealso “de-bunking” sequences where would-be experts tell their audience that all this is just a hoax. Doesn’t it resemble the financial world of 2006-2007 ? When a few analysts predicted a financial catastrophe, and were all de-bunked by bigger experts… we all know who ended up being right.

After this introduction sequence, we meet Jerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his cliché’d happy family. However, the TV is still present and spews out news about martial law in some country, which enables one of the daughters to ask a question and let the audience know that Jerry used to work in war zones. Thanks for that info. But on a closer look, we also notice that Jerry turns his back to the news, he doesn’t want to care anymore about the world, only about his family, his happy selfish little comfort life. Sounds familiar ?

Jerry and his family then get stuck in a massive trafic jam, downtown Philadelphia, nothing new here. But quickly, signs of unrest appear and we witness them from Jerry’s perspective, which enables total immersion in the story. Helicopters, excessively nervous cops, and then an explosion, before a sanitation truck plows through the trafic jam, conveniently allowing Jerry and his family to escape. Plenty of action and suspense, but still no zombie in sight. An aerial shots lets us see the first ones from a distance, they move in closer and closer to our hero, fast, angry, violent, head-butting their way into cars to bite the occupants. Jerry manages to observe a man turning into a zombie, and even time it at 12 seconds, that’s fast. He then finds a conveniently placed motorhome complete with ignition keys and a hunting rifle, he manages to escape, passing by a military checkpoint with soldiers shooting (at the zombies, hopefully). An aerial frame, seen from the inside of a military plane, reveals a burning Philadelphia, and a radio voice says “containment failed”. In only three minutes time, we have witnessed the fall of that city. It’s the fall of America, and it’s damn fast.

A bit further, Jerry and his family try to gather resources at a Newark supermarket. The good old supermarket scene, except that there won’t be any zombies in here, danger comes from other humans. As Jerry defuses a tense situation with a gun-holding drug addict, he hears his wife scream. She is being attacked by several men. Jerry rushes to help her, as the men take out their guns, he headshots one of them. First headshot, not on a zombie, but on a human turned savage by the circumstances. A policeman rushes into the store but totally ignores the scene and grabs all the food he cans. This is the end of civilization.

What the movie tells us really here is that ever-accelerating events are turning us crazy. Our real world is getting faster day after day, and that’s scary because we humans need time to develop, think and react. If we don’t have time to do this, we can only follow some natural reflexes, which means we’re no better than zombies.

After Jerry gets rescused by what’s left of the US army, government and UN, having their seat on a bunch of military ships somewhere in the Atlantic ocean, he is blackmailed into his job. Yes, blackmailed. He didn’t volunteer like a hero would do, he only wanted to put his family in a safe location, he’s only human after all.

Jerry must help a young virologist find the original host of the zombie virus and develop a cure. He is supposed to work as an interface between the scientist and the soldiers, whome he calls “hammers” because to them everything looks like a nail. As Jerry used to be a war crime inspector, he’s used to investigating in very dangerous areas (imagine CSI Iraq). They are sent to an american base in South Korea.

You can see where it’s going : Jerry the tough and the nerdy virologist will have trouble teaming up, then each one will learn from the other and they’ll succeed…… wrong. The virologist accidentally kills himself even before he puts a foot on South Korean soil. Talking of a twist.

At the base, Jerry finds out that the local US soldiers are indeed hammers as they have burned all evidence, hoping it would stop the zombies. Conveniently, they have captured an ex-CIA agent who lets Jerry know that one country in the world still hasn’t fallen : Israel. How did they know what was coming ?

As Jerry rushes to his plane, his wife calls him, which provokes a reaction from the local zombies. Several soldiers get killed, Jerry just manages to escape. As he calls back his wife, he doesn’t blame her, the perfect mister husband. But as he travels, a flash of light blinds him and he silently witnesses a nuclear explosion somewhere over Asia. Someone has gotten so desperate that he resorted to nukes. This is the fall of Man.

In Jerusalem, the city of God, Jerry meets the head of the Mossad who gives us a clue as to how this was possible : people don’t believe something can happen until it has happened. But he doesn’t judge people, he claims it’s human nature. Just like nobody believed the financial crisis could happen, sounds familiar, strikes a chord. As the Mossad guy confronts Jerry with his past, Jerry replies with his profile : very efficient, but not very creative. There’s a clue here, more on that very soon.

So, how was Israel able to predict the zombie apocalypse ? Thanks to smartass contrarians, the 10 th man method. When 9 people look at the same piece of information and come to the same conclusion (hoax, cover-up, whatever), it’s the duty of the 10 th person to assume they are wrong and start digging in that direction. He saw the clue coming from India, and as noone else believed zombies could be real, he was forced to investigate in that direction, something noone else did, and he quickly discovered it was true. Unfortunately, he ran out of time, and — lacking creativity, remember — all he could come up with was to build more walls around Israel. Walls are a sign of despair, they fail (the Roman “limes” didn’t prevent the collapse of the Empire, the wall of Berlin fell, and now the US border wall doesn’t stop the “immigration hurricane”). The head of the Mossad is in fact no better than a zombie. Lacking the very human skill of creativity, and lacking time, he only implemented an old automatic method. Here the movie tells us something important again, if we humans are to survive a difficult world (think climate change, epidemics, economic meltdown), we need to slow down, take time to think, and use some creativity.

After Jerusalem gets, logivally, overrun (the fall of God), Jerry manages to escape. But first, he had his revelation : the zombies don’t attack very sick people. (And noone noticed that before ? Are there no hospitals with very sick people like….everywhere ? ). Jerry is sent to a WHO facility in Wales where we are served with a close-quarter thrilling hide and seek scene between Jerry and some zombies. Jerry then injects himself with a disease (leap of faith), and then plays in a commercial, before testing out his “cloak”. Interestingly, this part of the movie is a bit slower. The message is here again : if you want to find a good creative solution, you need time.

So, between the lines of this commercial zombie-flick, there is something important to understand. Unfortunately, most zombie-fans got turned off by the commercial aspect of the movie, and also by the fact that a basic code of the genre was not respected : in a zombie apocalypse, what fans like is the fact that there is no society anymore, only survival of the fittest. It’s the adventure in chaos, like in a Western genre, no laws, no government, no taxes. In World War Z, there is still something like a government, and it’s not a very nice one either. It blackmailed Jerry into this job, and when he disappears because of an accident, his family is deemed “useless” and sent to a refugee camp because the space on board the Atlantic fleet must be used as efficiently as possible.