World War Z Trailer

Any fan of the zombie genre worth their salt will at least know of World War Z.. in a world where zombies are now an overused and somewhat tired (but still tremendously popular) monster, it actually offered an interesting take on the zombie apocalypse both in its scope and its narrative style. Rather than the usual, struggling-to-stop-the-infection or ragtag-group-of-survivors-must-reach-safety that have been done a hundred times a piece, it took the perspective of a writer chronicling the tales of people AFTER humanity had survived the catastrophic effect of the titular zombie war.

It's really the logical conclusion of the Romero ideal, where the slow moving zombies are merely an external means by which to expedite internal conflict. Except that this story plays out on a global setting and we're perceiving the world through a number of very different individual (and at times, unreliable) perspectives. In a genre which has inexorably moved toward the more immediately threatening running zombies since 28 Days Later, World War Z was a good way of showing a (relatively) realistic scenario for the way the slow mving undead might be able to almost destroy mankind.

So, naturally the film adaptation was ALWAYS going to be fraught with problems and the production seems to have done little but lurch from one disaster to another, enduring serious amounts of rewriting and reshooting - something that would almost certainly have sunk a film with a lower budget or less star power. Regardless of these problems, the trailer has just been released!

And while trailers are by no means a good way to judge a film, this seems judged to systematically disabuse anyone of the notion that this is based on the source material in anything but name alone. First of all, this is set  at the BEGINNING of a zombie apocalypse - not at its end. Secondly, these zombies are not the slow shambling kind - they're track and field zombies ON STEROIDS. Hell, these zombies look like they could outrun a car! Thirdly, from the looks of things... this isn't going to be a multi-faceted narrative, it's going to be a vehicle for Brad Pitt single handedly saving the world. That's not exactly surprising and is one of the reasons why an A-lister was always going to be a bad idea.

The most notable thing is how TERRIBLE the special effects in the trailer are - for a film with a budget of $125m you'd expect something good. If these are actual effects in the cut that is released... just, wow. We're talking about the kind of effects people cringed at in The Mummy and those looked better AND had the excuse of being from 1999. We're talking about zombies behaving like some kind of gigantic kind of giant ball that has properties of a liquid and a gas... it's truly bizarre and sticks out like a sore thumb. All the WORST excesses, everything that people complain about when it comes to CGI... this trailer seems to almost perfectly sum it up.

It's hard to know exactly what this film will be like but if this is the best it has to offer then it looks as if Paul W.S. Anderson is in for some stiff competition as regards bad big budget zombie films...

Prototype is at it's heart - nothing more than a mish mash of different tried and tested gameplay and story elements. The free roaming owes a lot to GTA, the gameplay and powers are a lot like what you'll get in Devil May Cry and its ilk and the story is pretty much Resident Evil. While not having an original idea in its pretty little head and not being overly pretty... the game is still great.

Alex Mercer is a - sigh - amensiac who wakes up after being dead. He has to piece together his life and work out what's going on with the infection of Manhattan by a virus and yadda yadda yadda. It's not very original but who cares? YOU GET TO TOSS TANKS AROUND. Literally. You can pick up tanks, cars, helicopters.

The story really isn't very much to write home about - government conspiracy, supersoldiers resulting in zombies and that kind of thing. That's irrelevant - although, as a gameplay dynamic you can run around the city and "absorb" people to uncover the backstory of the game. This absorption can also be used to gain and improve skills and infiltrate enemy bases. It's actually a pretty nifty dynamic. Although, the AI in the game is so AWFUL that you can get away with just dropping 100m from a rooftop dressed as a soldier in front of another soldier and he'll high five you instead of shooting you in the FACE.

Not that point blank machine gun fire would do much becuase it's worth noticing even at the start of the game - you're RIDICULOUSLY powerful. Insanely super powerful and that is why this game rocks. On normal difficulty you are as a GOD. Once you kick in your power ups, you can shrug off artillery shells - small arms fire does noticing. You can heal by chowing down on unsuspecting people in most situations. Really only a pack of Hunters will poses a threat. You can hijack tanks and helicopters, fly (kinda), use the weapons of the soldiers and use a variety of abilities - whip, claws, GIANT SWORD ARM and enhanced strength. Plenty of moves to use.

Beyond the usual storyline missions there are GTAesque challenges that... don't really do much, they're just there for extra playtime. Running along the roof, absorbing people and good old fashioned murder. Not to mention you can just go and break into military bases or tear apart the hives.

The game is to be played purely for fun. There is no deep meaning. The game tries to inject some sense of an epic storyline with the "Web of intrigue" backstory mechanic but that's not really that important. Not are the mini-games - this game is about running around and smashing stuff in a number of awesome ways. It doesn't matter that the plot is a big cliche or that the voice acting is Resident Evil level... it's all just a bit of a laugh.

If you've not heard of Resident Evil - a franchise more prolific than the fictional viruses it is focused on - the chances are you've been hiding under a rock, while frozen in ice at the edge of space and your TV has been on the blink. If that's the case, the basic story is - evil corporation wants to make perfect weapon via use of mutagenic virus (mostly the T-virus but there are several other flavours but mostly the T-virus and the G-virus). Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of the virus is that it turns people into zombies... of course, given that the MAIN series of games is soon to be in its fifth instalment - things have become a little more complicated than that... but, that's the gist.

In contrast to the fifth instalment of the game, Resident Evil: Degeneration hasn't been overly publicised and is in fact wholly CGI... and seemingly canonical - unlike the live action films... This actually includes characters from the games and ties up some loose ends from the games. It certainly isn't going to win any points for story telling or voice acting and it definitely isn't the prettiest CGI you've seen - Advent Children puts it to shame - but you're not here for a whole lot of story... you're here for zombie killing.

The story starts off with Claire in an airport, incidentally meeting a cookie cutter sleazebag politician. People aren't too happy about all manner of biological research being done on their back door - what with various zombie related incidents and all. So there are a number of protests. We start out with a fake out - a guy pretending to be a zombie lumbering toward the sleazebag politician. Which is followed five seconds later by a REAL zombie - it starts chowing down on the nearest available person and all hell breaks loose.

Hell breaking loose involves a 747 CRASHING INTO THE TERMINAL - and exploding AND then zombies jumping out of it to shamble toward Claire and her little kiddy and the sleazebag politician... Yeah, you had a feeling they might all manage to survive this far, didn't you?

Anyway, they manage to make a momentary escape but - naturally - a building full of zombies isn't the easiest place to get out of and the whole place is locked down because this isn't a Romero film and hence, the military aren't inept/chaotic evil. Although, that's somewhat overshadowed by the fact they send in Leon - who is a bad ass - and give him the generic bad asses who KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ZOMBIES.

How many times does this happen? You'll have an expert or some situation where one person/group are shown to know the score... and tell people "Do X". So, it's inevitable that they will then either not do X or do the exact opposite of it. You have to ask WHY they bother to use experts sometimes... Leon's squad is pretty keen to follow this trope because there is a lot of trying to help zombies, shooting zombies anywhere BUT the head... amazement that they can survive a few clips of ammo and this is DESPITE being TOLD. Needless to say, Leon repeatedly saves their sorry asses.

The two groups meet up and escape - the senator does a fantastic self-saving bit that really deserves an award... mostly because he DIDN'T get chowed down upon... generally when these guys go "Fuck ya!" and make their own dash for safety, they're dead sooner than you can say lowlife. Naturally, one of the idiot SWAT-substitute team gets bitten and does the "LEAVE ME BEHIND!" and everyone else gets out in time for tea.

At which point Claire discovers that WilPharma was actually making a vaccine for the T-virus - and she'd been protesting against them! Bitch. They actually have some trucks full of the stuff but wouldn't you know it - they get blown up... and this is all part of a bio-terror plot to expose the truth behind Raccoon city. While it's fair to say that this IS probably a good way to scare the authorities into doing that - you'd think people familiar with what happened would want to make sure they prevented a recurrence?

Regardless, we get about the only "character building" in the story - where we found out the SRT girl is in fact the sister of Curtis, the crazy bio-terrorist... who is rather peeved that the government has covered up Raccoon City because his family died there. It's worth saying that true to most Capcom stuff - the dialogue here is absolutely dire. Whether that's the result of translation coupled with the half-hearted voice acting remains to be seen but it's regularly so awful you'll be laughing at the "drama"... but it's all about the zombies. Actually, the airport is really the last of them.

We have our heroine go to WilPharma. The researcher chap chit-chats with her and after a call from the Senator spills his guts about the G-virus being there and how they wanted to develop a vaccine and so on. Then he goes "Oh... I need to go fix the server." In the most awfully stilted piece of dialogue the entire film has to offer - which is saying something. 7 seconds later he's telling her there's a bomb about to go off and she sees Curtis running through the building... so much for security.

And cue giant explosion. The level of damage is fairly inconsistent but... no one is perfect. Naturally, Leon and SRT girl head over after the phone line cuts out... because this high security research facility has revolving doors. SRT girl finds her brother - who for some idiotic reason thinks injecting the G-virus into himself is a good idea. He has enough time to talk to her a bit before a couple of dozen soldiers appear - watch in shock as he grows a giant eyeball on his shoulder and one of his hands becomes enormous. Seriously, when that starts happening - you start shooting the bastard.

As one might expect - giant mutated things take more than a little automatic fire to slow down, so he plays possum and then pretty much wipes the floor with the troops. Luckily, Leon turns up and manages to get a walkway to drop on the bastard. The building is then about to ignite itself... oh dear and Curtis ISN'T REALLY DEAD! Yes, you're shocked by the revelation... just how is a GIANT EYE so invulnerable? Powers! The powers of a giant mutant zombie eye.

So, the entire facility is apparently built over your standard infinite drop to the CENTRE OF THE EARTH! Not even a little exaggeration. Naturally, as the base has magical means of detecting the virus - it starts "jettisoning" parts of the base... INTO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. It must have been some planning application to get that. Naturally, you can guess - evil is killed and all named characters manage to live to see the light of day.

And if you don't see the twist at the end - you're as smart as a zombie.

All-in-all - not an unreasonable effort. Not thrilling and it sags a lot between the two main action sequences... because, this is really just two action sequences stuck together. For Resident Evil fans, a must... zombie fans will find there rather less to get their teeth into here. It's fun enough but rather lacking in substance and zombie killing.

Dead Set - the name a play on words... with one being the literal situation of the show and the other, meaning motivated toward an objective - is a zombie show that falls somewhere between Sean of the Dead and 28 Days Later. Comparisons to both are inevitable as the show has some humour in it and of course, the increasingly popular track and field zombies.

In five instalments, the show catalogued your average track and field zombie outbreak - the twist being that the protagonists are all in some way involved with the infamous reality TV show Big Brother... because the writer is a well known loather of these shows, there was an expectation of satire... but beyond a few references and zombies dully staring at screens of the show, there isn't much... there is certainly some humour but for the most part, this is played as a fairly straight horror film.

Things kick off on eviction night... as one might expect, someone does ol' stupid act. It's really 28 days later because the infection is nigh on INSTANT. Cue track and field zombies. Including Davina McCall having her throat ripped out...

This sets into motion the dynamic of the things... the witless non-entities of Big Brother (and some of the production staff) stuck in a zombie apocalypse. There are some jokes but mostly straight horror.

The real problem with running zombies is... they kill tension. You have a bunch of people lumbering toward you? That's slow and intense. Running, it's a bit - oh, it's all over! Especially when they're magical zombies. The regular kind, they can run forever. No real need to eat, sleep, drink...

As it goes, the show is pretty good. It's fair to say, while it's not even tipping the scales at 90 minutes, at times - it feels like it's stretching the material a little thin but that's only at the low points... When the show is on form - it's firing on all cylinders and it DOES build momentum. The times it feels weak are toward the start.... overall, it's a fun zombie film.

The heart of any good zombie film - or pseudo zombie film - worth its salt, is the sense of a world turned upside down. A place where the rules have changed instantly, inexplicably and irreversibly. People go through disbelief and denial and eventually - if they manage to live long enough - they come to accept the grim truth, that there is only survival now.

Diary of the Dead may employ the now tired narrative method of "billy films everything"... but then, it does it for FAR more sensible reasons than Cloverfield did "I've got der camera, better film everything DUR!" No, Diary makes more sense in its documenting of the events that occur. In fact, in many senses - it's integral to the story.

Pretty much off the bat, things go South. The dead being so rude as to come back to life. A couple of sensible people decide to head out to the well fortified mansion. The rest decide to just mess around and go home. In a big ol' Winnebago... not the best zombiemobile but it seems to do OK. Naturally, people start out not knowing what's happening - not believing and so on.

The dynamic is different to most other zombie films... we start with a half dozen people, who actually all know one another. There are people along the way but the disparate group of survivors, thrown together by fate isn't present... and that is rather a staple of zombie films - fuelling tension between people. Once everyone gets the whole "dead rising from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living" thing though, they're about as cohesive a group as a group of college students can be.

They take a rather different view to the normal groups... there's no holing up in the nearest mall or barn. People want to get home... or at least they do for a while. Eventually they realise that survival and not family reunion is the way forward. About time. Naturally - it's a Romero film - the military are NO help... negative help... did the military kill his family? Although, in a situation such as envisioned by a zombie apocalypse - it makes sense that the military would end up running the show but really, the interactions with other groups are transitory. In fact, at the perfunctory 90 minutes the film itself feels rather transitory...

There's no real chance for the characters to develop... even those who don't have a camera glued to their face - in yet another example of people wantonly ignoring survival instinct... but that's necessary for the method of storytelling... in fact, it's pertinent to the social commentary of the film. In much the same way that Night of the Living Dead made points about racism and Dawn of the Dead pointedly mocked mindless consumer culture - not to mention the shameless anti-military message of Day of the Dead - Diary of the Dead makes very obvious observations about the nature of the media... the distortions of the government, the distance that one gains from events by filming them... and how voyeurism has become so common place.

As zombie films go... danger seldom feels pressing here. Occasionally there are moments - most notably in the barn when there is a horde of zombies encroaching and the Winnebago needs fixed - but on the whole, the group are merely in a situation where potential danger is present... although, they seem to be totally safe inside their vehicle. Zombies do seem to inexplicably appear en masse at rather convenient intervals - really, you wouldn't think there would be dozens of people hanging out in shambling distance of a barn or remote mansion. In Dawn of the Dead it made sense - zombies were heading to malls because of residual memory... there doesn't seem much reason for them to show up in the middle of nowhere... but then, they're necessary for tension and so on... just as their general absence is necessary for the voyeurism and documentary making to occur.

The commentary is pretty tame compared to the rather stark messages of Romero's original trilogy. It's not exactly as bare faced as zombies walking around a mall, it's just "ooo - the youtube generation!" The compulsion to document. It feels as if the story is really just a vehicle for that observation, it's focused on more than the zombies... naturally, there's a bit of "people are rubbish" too but then that's hardly original. It's all very rushed... even though we're dropped almost immediately into a situation where the characters are aware of events - even if some are sceptical - and yet still it feels as if the film is rushing to get everything tied up in a neat ninety minute package. Which is easily to the detriment of the film. Developing the characters, adding in more action... would have greatly improved things.

In terms of action... well, there's precious little. Which is at least realistic... the kids never come across a handy cache of automatic weapons and instantly know how to use them... but then, neither are they instantly beset with hordes of zombies from nowhere - ok, it happens in the middle of the film and at the end but not nearly as much as in your average zombie film. So, in other words - don't expect this to be on a par with the Resident Evil films or the Dawn of the Dead remake because there isn't a whole lot of zombie shooting here. In that respect, it follows the similarly shot Cloverfield... no excesses of information or action... just pervasive tension.

If you're in the mood for Blair Witch (minus the excessive amounts of incessant screaming and nausea inducing camera shaking) meets zombies... it's probably a good match but it's far from Romero's best work... and even the cringe worthy Land of the Dead was better - although just barely. For Romero and zombie fans only, really.