Zombie Movies! "World War Z", "Dead Heat" and "Citadel". Actually Quite An Interesting Selection...

[philosoraptor42]

The theme for this post is zombie movies. First of all we have the global zombie apocalypse movie "World War Z", supposedly intended to have a connection to the popular novel, but more of a zombie movie if taken from the perspective of the UN instead of from the perspective of small isolated groups of survivors.

Secondly, I review the intentionally cheesy 80s buddy-cop movie "Dead Heat".

Finally I've included the movie "Citadel", another horror movie from 2013. "Citadel" focusses on hoodies rather than zombies, but the hoodies come to seem more and more like a special kind of zombie as the movie progresses (which isn't so strange considering that the zombies in "28 Days Later" were infected with a virus which produced the rage-fuelled behaviour of a savage mob).


World War Z (2013)

I seem to remember being told that this wasn't that good. Am I really such a zombie fanatic that I'll accept any old rubbish? Seriously, this was great! Okay, so I haven't read the book. I understand that it most likely has very little relation to the book at all. I've heard it suggested that this film would have been much more widely accepted had it been given its own distinctive title like "Zombie Tornado" rather than the title of an existing book. Still, as a zombie movie which looks at the global scale of the zombie apocalypse scenario rather than simply the carnage in individual spots this was pretty awesome.



I will admit that there are a couple of points where you really have to accept "I am watching a movie" in order to accept what is happening. First of all, no one just walks away from a plane crash. Perhaps we could accept a zombie doing so, but not a human being. Secondly, it's always annoying when events happen overly conveniently. If you are in a war movie and an attack is launched on the base just as the protagonist arrives, that makes sense because they are expecting new attacks all the time. But in "World War Z" there's a point where an area is overrun not very long after our protagonist, played by Brad Pitt, arrives on the scene and it happens in such a way that it is confusing that it never happened before. (Zombies are attracted by noise and the area has planes and helicopters flying in, so it's bizarre that the particular noise we come across could ever be the catalyst for an additional influx of zombies.) There's a trope on the tv tropes website called "fridge logic" where you only recognise the problems with a film after you leave to do something else. But these two issues above are barely even fridge logic.



That being said, the film is so much fun that I can forgive it a few odd little foibles. The novelty of this zombie movie is that our protagonist works for the UN and has the task of helping a medical researcher to try to find a solution to the zombie outbreak. Like in the movie "Contagion" the focus is on the source of the infection (if it even IS an 'infection' at all).

I regularly find myself reflecting on how far Brad Pitt has come, since some of his early films did not impress me at all. I think even fans of "Interview With A Vampire" (of which I am not one) recognise that Brad Pitt gives a pretty bland performance there. His role as a stoner in "True Romance", while great, didn't give much of a hint of the successful career he had ahead of him. And "Legends of the Fall" struck me, personally, as absolutely dire, and I found myself lumping a lot of blame on the actor in the starring role. But now Brad Pitt has starred in a cacophany of fantastic films where his acting skills are made very clear indeed: "Se7en", "Twelve Monkeys", "Fight Club", "Snatch" and "Burn After Reading". "World War Z" needed an actor who could carry this film and keep us invested and Brad Pitt was clearly a great choice.



This is not strictly a horror movie. Brad Pitt is rarely stuck somewhere long before he gets to fly away again, in a plane or a helicopter. This is not claustrophobic like a zombie movie would normally be, except perhaps the scene at the end. I heard that the final scene had been added in at the last minute, but it actually follows from the previous scenes very well. Also, in that final section they clearly pulled out all the stops, pulling in some incredible acting talent including Peter Capaldi (who has just started as Doctor Who but is probably most well known for his role as the sweary Scottish spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in "In The Loop"), Moritz Bleibtreu ("Das Experiment"), and Ruth Negga (Nikki, the teleporting girl from the tv series "Misfits").



In apocalypse stories there's generally either no authority figures left at all, or the authority figures are taking up all the resources for themselves and are over in their own private bunker. Here we get to see what the authorities are trying to do while the world falls into chaos around them and its not a side of things that has really been handled very much in zombie movies. Whenever any figure has a bigger piece of the pie when the apocalypse comes, they have generally been shown to be wholly unscrupulous. An obvious example would be Dennis Hopper's entrepreneurial character in "Land Of The Dead". Here Brad Pitt is working for an organisation that genuinely seems to want to take steps to solve the crisis (though admittedly they aren't saints either).



There's some interesting satire along the way and in some ways this is a much more cerebral zombie movie than you'd normally expect. The effects appear to have been tidied up from the rather messy effects in the trailer and the larger scale images which trailers were so keen to show off are used more sparingly in the movie. The ant-like towers of zombies we see in a lot of promotional material are not used too often, but I have to say that I was very impressed by this new approach to zombie behaviour. It's yet another example of a larger scale perspective on the zombie infestation problem being examined here.



I don't know that World War Z is perfect. What film is? But it makes great use of a high quality cast, it has an interesting and original approach to the zombie genre and it's generally a wonderfully entertaining film to watch. What more do you want? And let's put things in perspective here. There are far less problems here than there were in the "28 Days/Weeks Later" movies, even if this isn't doing the same groundbreaking work in its depiction of the zombies themselves. "World War Z" is more consistent in quality than we are normally used to from zombie films.

A+




Dead Heat (1988)

I heard about this movie from the podcast "Filmsack". They often deal with cheesy movies and this is no exception, but the premise was just so intriguing I had to check it out. This is a campy buddy-cop-comedy movie with zombies. The two detectives (one sensible, one making wise cracks all the time), discover that some criminals are actually zombies brought back to life by a machine. When one of the two officers is killed in the line of duty his partner is able to strap his body into this contraption so that he can be revived as a clear-thinking zombie and help to catch the people who killed him.



The jokes don't always hit the mark and I'd actually say that Joe Piscopo is doing a better job in his delivery of the lines than the material really warrants. Both the lead actors deserve credit for keeping us engaged, since the production values aren't really terribly high here and I'm not entirely convinced by the quality of the direction either. Yet the film still feels like great fun all the same.



While the effects work isn't always brilliant, I think full credit needs to be given for one scene in a Chinese restaurant. Things get pretty crazy in that scene. The pacing here is great throughout though and wherever anything might be iffy, the film never really slows down enough to give you time to think about it.



I think it helps that the film is fully aware of how silly it is, but doesn't draw attention to it too much. This is an 80s buddy comedy with all the tropes you'd expect and that already includes being pretty silly. The inclusion of zombies however, completely removes any idea that this film is set in the real world. Perhaps the best example of this kind of film is "Big Trouble In Little China".



Another awesome thing that I must point out... Vincent Price is in this movie! Naturally he is brilliant as always. He must be in his late seventies by this point, so it's not a massively involved part, but he's awesome all the same.



Dead Heat is pure silly escapism. If the idea of an 80s buddy comedy with zombies sounds at all appealing, then you can expect to have fun with this. It's no masterpiece and admittedly there have been much funnier zombie comedies, but if you are a zombie fan, I'd say this is a must-see.

B-




Citadel (2012)

I've been waiting for this one for a long time. While I'd seen a few reviews, all I had really grasped in advance was that it is a horror movie somehow linked with a fear of hoodies. The last time I saw a movie dealing with that, it was the movie "Heartless" where the lead character seemed to be hallucinating that under the hood they were some strange kind of lizard people. "Heartless" had an interesting urban fantasy set-up. It had a fairytale-esque story where a strange kind of demonic figure living at the top of a block of flats offers the lead character the opportunity to undo his facial scarring. However, the ending felt like a bit of a cop-out.


Left: Portrayal of scary hoodies in "Citadel". Right: Portrayal of scary hoodies in "Heartless".

The movie "Citadel" seems to work the opposite way around from "Heartless". It begins with everything seeming down-to-earth and gradually comes closer to urban fantasy as the film goes on. There's some ambiguity though, since the main protagonist is dealing with severe agraphobia as a result of an attack on his wife by hoodies. He is frightened to leave the house and the way the story unfolds, it appears as if the world around him is conspiring to make things even harder for him. There are supposed to be plans for redevelopment of the council estate, but there's no sign that the redevelopment will ever happen. When he tries to get some details sorted from his old flat, he discovers that the bus route no longer goes all the way there.



On top of all this, our protagonist has a new born baby. The attack on his wife killed her but the baby survived. We hear from an expert how his behaviour currently marks him out clearly as a victim because of his extreme fear and the main thing he is frightened for is the safety of his baby. A good friend at the hospital is keen to help him and to assure him that everything is alright. However, his attention is drawn in by the priest who oversees his wife's funeral, who seems convinced that the hoodies in the block of flats really ARE after him and may not even be human. The main theme here is that the movie establishes the fear and paranoia of the main character and this distorts the way the film represents the world around him.



The pacing isn't perfect and not all of the atmospheric effects work as well as intended. For example, on the one hand the visual image of a blinding light shining through the doorway representing the fear of the outside world is very effective. However, when we are waiting around for the film to move forward and watching our protagonist get more and more frightened, the decision to use a loud irritating buzzing/humming noise to convey the lead character's frustration and anxiety served to be more annoying than atmospheric.



I am prepared to give a lot of credit to this film for being willing to stick through to the end with its controversial choice of villains. It could easily have gone the same way as "Heartless" and undermined prior events in the film, but instead it follows through - and there's actually a pretty moving character arc for our main protagonist. "Citadel" is not without its problems, but I have a soft spot for it all the same.

B-