WORLD WAR Z An Outstanding Horror Movie

The movie version of World War Z is everything a great Horror movie should be: smart, fast moving, and frightening. Although much of the political and military detail in the earlier novel had to be left out, the movie retains the scary core story.

The movie opens like a bullet with a mass panic scene on the traffic-jammed streets of downtown Philadelphia. From there, it charges immediately into an emergency situation of a spreading pandemic of undead human predators.

What makes World War Z distinctive is its portrayal of the zombie threat on a massive, worldwide scale. These zombies are fast, aggressive, and can work together like an insect colony to overrun everything. The mass attack scenes in Philadelphia and at the walled fortress of Jerusalem are truly epic and thrilling.

This movie is a perfect combination of two latent modern fears: fear of human overpopulation, and fear of a sudden pandemic disease that will sweep through society and across the planet. The looming threat comes from too many other people crowding around us ever more densely all the time.

World War Z is an example of the disturbing exploration of our subconscious fears that the Horror genre can offer. We need more outstanding Horror movies like this one.

BEACH RATING:  4 Palm Trees

Horror Movies - A Dying Genre?

Back in 2009, this blog did a post asking if the Horror movie genre had itself become one of the walking dead lately. Not much has changed since then.

We still get too much recycling of well-worn stereotype plots. How many more vampire and zombie retreads do we need to see? How many more formula slasher movies that kill off victims by ever-gorier methods?

Occasionally, a fresh new take on horror themes will appear. The creepy paranoia of The Ring, an import from Japanese horror films. The pandemic hysteria of 28 Days Later. The claustrophobic intensity of Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

Sadly, these inventive breakthroughs are all too rare. Last year's Insidious was an unsettling portrayal of hidden demonic forces around us. 2012 has so far offered only Cabin in the Woods, a sardonic commentary on the empty nihilism of the whole slasher movie format.

If the Horror movie genre is to revitalize itself, it needs to get off a stale, dead-end road and find vivid new ways to portray the elemental fears of human existence in modern society. That's what the Horror genre is there for, after all.

Horror Movies: All But Dead?

The Horror Movie genre has itself become one of the walking dead lately.

Seen a really interesting, inventive horror movie recently? That's right, nobody else has either.

The genre has degenerated into formula slasher junk, remakes of tired franchise series, and comic-horror spoofs.

How many more tedious revisits to vampire or zombie characters do we have to be subjected to?

How far back do we have to go to find a horror movie with any kind of fresh concept? 28 Days Later? The Ring? Blair Witch Project?

What was the last imaginative creature feature to come out? The Host? Jeepers Creepers? Mimic?

The last slasher film with any glimmer of an actual thought was The Strangers. But not in a good way. In that movie, the attackers are anonymous, practically faceless strangers. Why did they do it? "Because we could," one of them answers. They drive away unknown in an old pickup. There are no consequences.

The Strangers is amoral and nihilistic. It represents a final dead-end road of sadism for its own sake. If the Horror Movie is to survive, it needs to get off that road and find new ways to portray the elemental fears of modern human existence.

Otherwise, the genre will become its own last, mutilated victim.