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

WORLD WAR Z a Documentary Horror Novel

World War Z by Max Brooks is a horror novel about a worldwide plague that turns the infected into living dead predators. The novel is written in documentary fashion, from first hand personal reports, giving it a credible, immediate realism. If Michael Crichton ever wrote a science-based zombie novel, this would be it.

World War Z stands apart from other typical zombie tales in the way it explores scientific issues, government actions, and the military program to exterminate the infected hordes. Another difference is that these predators are fast moving, tenacious, and work together in cooperative masses to overrun everything. This is a big canvas portrayal of how the plague sweeps around the world, doing massive damage to human society. The novel recalls other pandemic thrillers like Contagion and 28 Days Later.

The movie version of World war Z is scheduled to be released this June and could be a summer box office hit. Read the chilling, addictive novel first to get a sneak preview.

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.