WORLD WAR Z should be called the thinking man’s Zombie movie. Brad Pitt plays a former U.N. investigator who has quit the job to be what appears to be a stay at home dad. While he’s driving the kids to school, all of a sudden they are in the middle of a Zombie apocalypse. There’s a lot of running and fighting off the rampaging undead. While on the run, Pitt gets a call from his former boss who desperately needs him back on the job in order to find how to stop the spread of this plague. A lot of Zombie movies are obsessed with one of two things: splattering as many of the undead as the director can in two hours or getting the hero and his band of ragtag survivors to safety. This is neither. WWZ is more of a mystery/thriller. Pitt is searching for patient zero, but will he find him? Is that even the point? Ultimately, Pitt uses his investigative skills to come to a dire conclusion (I won’t spoil that here). There’s nothing overly remarkable in the film, other than the outstanding performance of Pitt and his interaction with about a dozen other characters. Make no mistake, this movie’s success falls right in Pitt’s lap and he is up to the task. WWZ does have its moments of humor and sentimentality in Pitt’s relationship with his family. But, there is a sense of foreboding throughout the movie, and it is set up by a series of TV news clips that give the audience the idea that a Zombie plague isn’t as far fetched as most movies might lead us to believe. The ending confirms that by not tying everything up in a neat little package that is easy for the audience to digest. And that’s why it is a thinking man’s Zombie movie, because WORLD WAR Z is about more than body counts and destruction. — Alan Yudman