World War Z: Swarming Zombies Are Stupid

Zombies are back on movie screens this week and Brad Pitt is trying to kill them. World War Z tells the tale of a global apocalypse brought about by swarms of the undead. But these swarms of the undead are different than your usual swarms of the undead. They swarm LITERALLY.

Yes, swarming zombies. Like the ants in all those acclaimed BBC nature documentaries. The voyage of the carpenter ant! Shot of a billion ants carrying pieces of leaf over the jungle floor in these crazy perfect lines. Some British guy having a verbal orgasm over it. A SINGLE ANT CAN CARRY A LEAF TEN MILLION TIMES HEAVIER THAN ITSELF. Wow ants are amazing when they are not ruining picnics or getting all up in my sugar bowl. How the hell do they get in there? Ain’t cracked or nothing.

The zombies in World War Z are evidently modeled on those parading leaf-carrying British-orgasm-causing nature documentary insects. For some effed-up reason their zombie instincts cause them to swarm together like a great mindless murdering collective (think 13-year-old girls only less vicious). This swarming instinct allows them to perform amazing feats of zombie teamwork like scaling walls by having some of the zombies form a sort of pillar and the others scramble up the pillar. Never mind that such activities would almost undoubtedly result in the bottom zombies’ fragile fleshy decomposing bodies collapsing, undermining the entire structure and sending it crumbling into a writhing pile of useless broken reanimated corpse-parts. This ain’t reality, it’s SUMMER MOVIE SEASON.

Also never mind that, in the novel upon which this movie is based, the zombies were regular old Romero Night of the Living Dead slow-moving mindless non-teamwork-oriented brain-munchers. You want Hollywood to stick to the source material? How fricking boring would that be? You wanna be bored, read a book. You wanna be bored AND suck down overpriced popcorn bathed in artery-clogging butter substitute? HOLLYWOOD.

Stupid movie fan rebuttal: “Yo dude like chill out. It’s zombies. Been like a couple years since a good legit zombie movie, so yeah I’m stoked for this. And don’t be throwing no Walking Dead up in my face neither. That’s TV dude. TV still don’t count. Plus that show sucks. WHO GIVES A CRAP ABOUT ANDREA’S SEX PROBLEMS??? This movie is going to rock like 28 Days Later or that one other good zombie movie that came out like ten years ago. What the hell was the name of that? Crap I was so high.”

You’re right stupid movie fan. I should follow your lead and just roll with this even if the entire premise is completely moronic. NO! Swarming zombies??? Call me a purist but zombies do not swarm. Zombies lurch. Zombies smash their hands through boarded-up windows and get their knuckles bashed by hysterical women wielding 2-by-4s. Zombies wander around chewing on leg bones. Maybe they can run. After 35 years of lurching zombies, okay. Running zombies. Cool Danny Boyle. Cool.

But this is what they were thinking when they did World War Z. “Look we know the zombie thing is kind of played so we need to freshen it up. This idea is kind of crazy but hear me out on it. What if instead of lurching or running these zombies SWARM TOGETHER LIKE INSECTS. Then we can have these great big huge CGI shots of like a million zombies swarming up the street. It will be the same effect as a Roland Emmerich tidal wave except IT WILL BE MADE OF ZOMBIES. How awesome will that crap look in 3D? Huh? Huh? Giant sack of cash for me? Giant sack of cash?”

I hope someone in that meeting pointed out the obvious objection. “Hey wait a second. Don’t those swarming insects have like exoskeletons or something? Aren’t they PHYSICALLY adapted to swarming? Why would zombies swarm like that if their bodies are not constructed to do so? Yeah yeah I know they’re zombies but it doesn’t make sense. Why would their brains be altered in such a ridiculous way? This is stupid like in War of the Worlds when the aliens are killed by microbes. Aliens never heard of fricking vaccination? They’re capable of building these amazing war machines that they can hide under the ground for millions of years and then revive in a second without the slightest hint of mechanical deterioration AND THEY NEVER THOUGHT TO ACCOUNT FOR MICROBES?”

And then Brad Pitt chimes in. “Yo guys listen. I need a hit here. I don’t need to remind you that it’s been awhile for me. So here’s what we do. We take some insanely safe formula like fricking zombies and tweak it a little to trick the idiots into thinking it’s original. I’m sorry, not idiots, MOVIEGOING PUBLIC. We trick those numbskulls with swarming zombies. Either we do this or you guys write me a car racing script. You really want to write me a car racing script? I’ll give you a minute to think about it.”

And that’s how you wind up with a movie that is essentially a big stupid Roland Emmerich-style disaster movie but with zombies. Even though the movie was originally supposed to be Children of Men with zombies. But you know, stuff happens. A couple years go by. The process gets gummed up. Tastes are seen to have evolved. Somebody decides that Children of Men isn’t exactly in the summer movie fan wheelhouse. Brad has a couple more kids. He’s in danger of not being able to afford that massive Italian villa he’s had his eye on since Clooney got his. So you know. Screw that Children of Men stuff. Get me some giant-ass CGI zombie tidal wave action. Don’t worry about making sense. That’s for suckers.

But no, I’m just kidding. Swarming zombies. Great fricking idea. Too bad they didn’t hire Shyamalan. He would’ve directed the crap out of this. How old are Pitt’s adopted kids now? One or two of them must be about ready to start co-starring with him. Sound of Music remake? But this time instead of singing the Von Trapps ARE ALL VAMPIRES WHO RACE CARS AND FIGHT SWARMING ZOMBIES. I love you Hollywood.