I read the book years ago & loved it so I was excited when I heard the movie was being made. I didn't get chance to see it at the cinema so watched it on sky last night. I was not impressed, it just seemed so boring & bloodless for a zombie film. As other have mentioned the pacing was terrible & i didn't care about the characters at all. And there were no fast zombies in the book so I was disappointed to see them used here.
Some scenes were ok, particularly the Israel scene but overall it was just dull & generic
I was a bit curious about the Cardiff ending's huge shift in tone in what had gone on before, and this is what I gathered following a google search:
The climax was originally going to be in Russia, and be a huge epic fight with the zombies - they did the filming for this. However when reviewing the footage it was felt the Russian finale didn't work, apparently it was almost like a superhero movie, with Pitt destroying huge waves of zombies.
So they decided to take a different tack together and did the Cardiff based ending instead - as they felt they couldn't really top the Israel action scenes.
This is why the pre release hype was all about plot rewrites and lots of new scenes being shot.
The plane crash was part of the original version, except it was then crashing in Russia, not Wales.
As for the movie, I enjoyed it a 3 stars out of 5 movie for me.
I did laugh at the implausibility of the plane crashing a short walk from their intended destination though. Plus how did they have any idea where the lab was following the crash?
I also seem to recall reading that the original cut of the film had a sub-plot with Gerry's wife in a non consensual realtionship with Matthew Fox's character (the soldier in the helicopter rescue scene) and the film ended with Gerry, the Israeli soldier (sorry can't remember her name) and some dude they picked up in Russia hot footing it back to the US to rescue her. Personally I'm glad this didn't make it into the final film.
And I may be in the minority but I really liked the scenes in the WHO facility and IMO it was a better final act than what I've read about the Russian one.
I also seem to recall reading that the original cut of the film had a sub-plot with Gerry's wife in a non consensual realtionship with Matthew Fox's character (the soldier in the helicopter rescue scene) and the film ended with Gerry, the Israeli soldier (sorry can't remember her name) and some dude they picked up in Russia hot footing it back to the US to rescue her. Personally I'm glad this didn't make it into the final film.
And I may be in the minority but I really liked the scenes in the WHO facility and IMO it was a better final act than what I've read about the Russian one.
I imagine they'll repurpose some of the Russia footage for use in the sequel. Some of it appears briefly in a news montage at the end of the film, if you're curious.
Thought it was okay enough; just sat back and went along with it for the ride... I mean, Zombies for Pete's sake, it's hardly gonna be sensible/credible is it? I did like the fact that Zombies were very fast and scurrying/swarming about - made a change from that tired and lame lumbering gait/dragging their arses walk with an arm outstretched schtick that normally gets trotted out. Only draw back was presence of little kiddywink poppets, really pees me off when these action films give too much airtime to snivelling little brats.
Comments
Some scenes were ok, particularly the Israel scene but overall it was just dull & generic
I also seem to recall reading that the original cut of the film had a sub-plot with Gerry's wife in a non consensual realtionship with Matthew Fox's character (the soldier in the helicopter rescue scene) and the film ended with Gerry, the Israeli soldier (sorry can't remember her name) and some dude they picked up in Russia hot footing it back to the US to rescue her. Personally I'm glad this didn't make it into the final film.
And I may be in the minority but I really liked the scenes in the WHO facility and IMO it was a better final act than what I've read about the Russian one.
I imagine they'll repurpose some of the Russia footage for use in the sequel. Some of it appears briefly in a news montage at the end of the film, if you're curious.