This podcast episode delves into the cinematic exploration of "World War Z," a film that portrays a former United Nations employee's harrowing quest to halt a zombie pandemic. While I appreciate the film's ambition and unique depiction of fast-moving zombies, I express reservations regarding its narrative coherence and CGI execution. My co-hosts and I engage in a rigorous analysis, highlighting the film's divergence from its literary source, as well as the missed opportunities to explore deeper themes of human nature and societal response to crisis. We grapple with the implications of the film's pacing and character development, ultimately reflecting on the broader fascination with zombie narratives in contemporary culture. Join us as we dissect this film's merits and shortcomings, culminating in our ratings and recommendations for future viewing.

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I think it's an amazing movie, but I just wanted to piss them off, so I have to throw it back.

Fair enough.

Alec, what about you, man?

It worked.

Hate this movie.

Welcome to the what's Every podcast.

We fashion ourselves cinematic judge and jury.

My name is J.J. crowder.

I'm here with my co host Matzenheimer.

Better Red than Dead.

And Alec Burgess.

Let's get it.

We appreciate you tuning in.

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There's nobody I want to hang out with from this movie.

Maybe one person.

We'll talk about it in a minute.

Yeah, so we're on week five.

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But no, no double dipping in the making us watch shitty movies.

But anyway, we're back to it.

We're on week five of Brad Pitt September.

Man, I missed the alliteration.

But yeah.

So we're kicking the week five off, the final week off, with World War Z.

It was written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof.

It was directed by Mark.

Mark Forrester.

It stars Brad Pitt, Muriel Enos, Daniela Curtez, James Badge, Dale Ludy Bokin, Matthew Fox, David Morse, Elias Gable, Peter Capaldi, Ruth Nega, and then the rest of these names I'm not even going to try to say.

So, yeah, there's a lot of people in this movie that I always forget are in this movie until I watch this movie.

It's about a former United nations employee, Jerry Lane, who traverses the world in a race against time to stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatens to destroy humanity itself.

That was a very dramatic synopsis.

But yeah, World War Z. Matson, this was your movie, my friend.

Yeah, I. I picked this one because I. I knew that it was.

When we were looking at Brad Pitt movies, I was like, well, the only one I really cared about was doing One of the Ocean's movies.

There's a bunch of these other Brad Pitt movies that I'd never seen before.

Knew we were going to do want to do something very different than those.

When this movie came, I just remember man, we were so fascinated with zombie stuff for like it was like a 10 year run.

It's not that we're not these days, but there was all kinds of the Walking Dead to what was the one with Will Smith that the name escapes me.

I am legend.

I am legend.

And there's probably 28 days later and all.

All that stuff but all the zombies.

Slow, dumb and not that these zombies were smart in this one, but they were fast and it was different.

And this movie stuck out to me as much as Brad Pitt's terrible hair stuck out to me in this movie as well.

I just, I think it to me this movie is a.

A fun journey in terms of what that era symbolized for like the.

The zombie esque movies.

But it just sticks out to me because it was a little bit different than the others.

And I like Brad Pitt in the movie, but it's certainly not his best movie.

But it was compelling subject matter at the time and I just wanted to throw it because I thought my co host wouldn't appreciate this movie for what it is.

It's not like I think it's an amazing movie, but I just wanted to piss them off so I had to throw it back.

Fair enough.

Alec, what about you, man?

It worked.

I hate this movie.

And the pro the reason why I hate it.

Well, there's several but the biggest one is it almost feels like because these are based.

This movie is based off of a book series.

It almost feels like the author was a bit of a dick and so they said okay, well we're just gonna up your story in many ways because there's so many just weird holes, things that don't make sense in this movie that are just like, like the biggest one.

What the did Jerry Lang do for the UN to where now he's got superhuman Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher s skills where in a zombie attack the first thing he does is count how long it takes someone who got bit to turn.

No, no.

And that that's like in the first 10 minutes this movie.

And there's just so many egregious things.

So yeah, you Matson.

I hate this movie.

Matson has succeeded.

I don't love this movie but for very different reasons and yet on the same line.

So if either of you read the book.

Yeah.

So this book there's there's nothing in this movie that is about that, that ties to this book except for zombies.

Like, that's it.

Because the book is about.

It's.

It's post world war zombie.

It's a.

The post zombie war in the book.

And it's told through interviews that the author is supposed to base.

He's not like Brad Pitt's character.

He's like a.

He's an author.

He's basically a.

It's a version of himself.

And he's doing interviews with people that survived the Zombie War and getting their opinions and their perspectives on the war and what they went through and things like that.

And it's one of those things where the book is amazing because it touches on a lot of human nature and society and like how we respond to crises and how we.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's.

It's an interesting storytelling device that this book utilizes to get through it.

My struggle with this movie is that unlike the last one where the movie I think is better because I read the book, this one is worse because I read the book because I'm like, I want to see the stories that we hear in the book.

I want to see those.

I don't even think it's been a long time since I read this book.

I don't think any one of the scenes that we get in this movie comes from the book.

I'm pretty sure this is all meant to be like a prequel basically, more or less to the book.

And I think base knowing that they had intended to do a trilogy of these movies, that that's probably the intention.

Here's how it started.

And then we'll go into.

In second and third movie, the actual stories and then probably the wind up of the war being over and we see these interviews happening.

But this movie has absolutely nothing to do with the book other than the world gets crushed by zombies and they go to a war with zombies.

Right?

So I struggle with it.

I also, I will give it one thing is I do love the fast zombies.

That's one thing I did like about 28 weeks later.

Like when you get those zombie hordes that are moving faster than like the Walking Dead, where like I could trip and fall and get my fat ass up off the ground and still not have them catch me.

Like, I'm like, why are we afraid of these zombies?

Like, other than when there's like a hundred thousand of them, what do I give a.

If it's two of them?

I could jog backwards and not get caught.

So what do I care?

This movie is very different.

And I love the idea of zombies that are like feral and fast and jump.

I also love the idea which they do touch on in the book that the, the zombification and the actual disease what creates it is a living organism almost.

And like once it gets into a human being, the reason that they're going after is not to eat, but to spread the virus.

Right?

Like that's what a disease is and what it does.

And I love that concept of the zombie ism, if you will.

And the fact that they actually talk about it versus like well, they're just fucking flesh eating human beings that don't have a brain.

Get the out of here.

No, like this is.

I love the idea of the, the organism, the disease within them is, is forcing them to do it in order to spread it.

And then I love the caveat that it's like, well, they're not gonna.

With sick people because it's, it's not going to survive.

Right.

Why would we mess with that?

So I love that concept.

Outside of that, like the CGI is horrid.

Like, oh my gosh.

Favorite parts of this movie that I wanted to be so good was it in, in Israel when they're climbing that wall, they're climbing each other to go up that wall.

That's such a sick thought and idea.

And you see it later again during the war scene where they're the flamethrower guys on the roof.

Like I love that and the idea of that, but it looks so terrible.

The CGI was so horrible that I'm like, it doesn't.

It lost me because I was like, dude, that arm.

That just doesn't it.

I could do better.

Like my favorite is the wave of zombies that just melts into itself.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

It's so bad.

Stupid.

I hate that scene.

Could have been really awesome because you can.

That whole like they're going in Israel and then the moment you start to hear that cry, like the, the chanting, you're like, oh man, don't.

What are you doing?

And you know those big walls are like, oh my goodness.

You're like terrifying.

But it could have, it could have landed a lot better.

For sure.

Yeah.

But I like those, the scene at the beginning and the scene in Israel where they, they do like the rush of motion, like the people running by the car, like all that.

And you're like, you feel like you're in it and then they kind of freeze frame a little bit.

I enjoyed that imagery because it it, like you said, Jay was just so different than the other ones where you're just like, okay, I'll just stand here and you can take five minutes to get over to me because you're limping along.

But what is it about zombies that have fascinated humanity so much?

Is it because we, like, we know what rabies does to animals and we're like, man, like, if it's somehow mutated in human beings, like it could happen to us or something?

Because we're clearly fascinated by this topic.

I've always just wanted to ask you guys what your thoughts were on that.

Alec, I'll let you dive in first.

I think we're programmed for it.

Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.

This is why I wanted you to go first.

The.

Do you mean by that like, like we are programmed to become zombies or we're programmed to be fascinated by it and who.

The program?

A little bit of both.

Okay.

Okay.

But I think it's the idea, right, that a.

A little bit the romantized, romanticized idea of it, right?

Zombie apocalypse.

I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Like, I'm gonna die.

But at the same time, you know, it's.

It's cool because I'm not missing out on anything, right?

Like, it's, it's.

I'd be that homeless guy in this movie that's just chilling, just chilling on the side of the road with this, you know, brown paper bag full of stuff.

But yeah, I think, I think we're conditioned or programmed into it.

Interesting.

He was the first one.

When you talk about the drunk guy drinking out of the paper bag at the beginning, he was the first one.

I was like, why did they mess with him?

Because he's already dying.

You get it?

I think for me, I think it's.

I'm gonna go a little deeper on this one.

I think it's a religious based thing.

I think that there's a.

There's this notion of the resurrection, right?

And you want to go down that road.

Like if you think about that and you take the, the mystical nature of religion, right?

The fact that there are unexplainable pieces of religion and how.

But then you think about resurrection, how the.

Would that work?

You know what I mean?

Like, does this body just like it's there and then we're back or do we write?

So I think there's some of that that's ingrained in it.

And so people have this fascination and then on top of that, I think there's an additional fascination with living forever and like, what does that look like?

And I think some people have got it in their minds that the zombification of human beings or anything, because it does take place to a certain extent in nature.

Like, it's hard to ignore the fact that in some level it could happen to human nature.

Like, that's.

That's why I think, for me, I enjoy, like, when we talk about zombies, like, not only the video game is fun to play, but like the last of us, that.

That they took something that exists in nature in real life.

You can see that on a daily basis of this cordyceps virus taking over bugs and other small creatures and forcing them to do things like becoming their mind.

Right.

I think that, to me is so interesting that there's something in nature that does that.

And the only thing that keeps us from having to happen to us is, is our natural body temperature is too hot for a fungi to survive right within us.

So it's like, it's one of those things, but it's so close, 5 degrees south, and we're right.

Like, it's.

It's one of those interesting concepts that it's not so far out of the reach of believability that we then become obsessed with it because we're like, well, what the.

If this actually happened.

Right.

So I think that's where a lot of that comes from.

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

I think that's.

We have examples in nature that have shown us, like, well, you technically couldn't even look at what, like, what would happen with COVID and how, like starts to shut down infrastructure.

And that wasn't.

People weren't attacking each other.

We were just afraid to breathe on each other.

And you just take that and multiply it by the moment someone starts to prey on someone else.

Like, oh, yeah, the pandemonium just kicks off and gets nuts.

And this movie just makes you think about, like, home preparedness and food and have guns and all these things.

But then you see stuff like that.

And I'm always.

I always say this in like, post apocalyptic movies.

I'm like, I ain't cut out for the survival man.

As long as I'm dining with the people that I love and we're all gone.

And I'm like, I'm not leaving them on bad terms.

Like, what are we living for here?

Like, it's.

You're gonna have no, like, essentially no electricity.

You're not gonna.

They're gonna.

You're not gonna have.

I'm not playing.

I'm not watching football.

I ain't playing Rocket League or Frost Haven.

I can't watch movies wearing anything with this pot.

None of that.

We're going back to good old 19th century, but worse, because you can't go outside and JJ's not gonna have AC.

He's gonna be a grumpy.

And you're going to be eating, like, potatoes that you grew out of your backyard and hope you don't die when you go out.

Like, I don't.

It just sounds horrible to me.

Like, once you get past all that, like, it's not glorious.

I. I don't need to be one of the people to carry on society at that point.

Like, look, I believe in the afterlife.

Hope.

Hope it's true.

And let me hold on to that.

Because otherwise I'm like, hell no, man.

Like, let me go.

That's fair.

There are a lot of things I would be okay.

Surviving of zombie apocalypse isn't one of them.

There's way too much running for me to have to do for me to be comfortable with surviving in that world.

I'd be like, the freaking soldier.

I'd be like, well, I got this one, boys.

I'm out of there.

And that, just so you know, is my favorite part of this movie, is like, when he's at that base with those soldiers.

And those guys are amazing.

Like, I love those guys because they just walk in and he's trying to be this investigator, right?

That he was with the U. ED and they're like, we got nothing for you.

This guy was doing dumb.

So he got shot.

Then we burnt the.

Because we didn't want to deal with it anymore.

Oh, the files were in that room.

They were just a casualty of the fire.

Yeah.

Col.

He's there.

Not gonna get much out of him.

His fingers still twitching, but that's about all you got.

Was.

Great.

I love that whole scene.

He's just like, all you gotta do is pedal, dude.

Like, what.

What is your problem?

I just.

Those guys were my favorite part of this movie.

That and the fact that.

That they had Peter Capaldi playing a who doctor.

Come on.

Come on.

How.

You know he only took that as a joke.

He's like, okay, I'll go do this.

Because I'm.

I'm a who doctor instead of Doctor who.

I.

Every time I watch this movie, I laugh my ass off the whole time he's talking.

Because he's literally credited in this movie too, as who Doctor.

Like, that's it.

He doesn't have a name.

He's just the WH Doctor.

I Was like, that's beautiful.

Somebody has a wonderful sense of humor to bring him into this movie in that role.

That's golden.

Yeah, Great stuff.

If you didn't know he played Doctor who for a very long time.

Good job, jj.

I hear people don't even.

Like somebody's telling me.

They're like, what's Doctor who?

I'm like, oh, God.

Oh, boy.

I was like, howard, we don't talk to those people.

Yeah.

So I will say, even though I do not like this movie, there were a couple things that I was like that was like a cool spin almost to Matson's point.

Or like, they do a good job in moments, A few moments.

Showing you, like, how serious this is that some of the other zombie movies don't do a good job of.

And so you have the scene where they're, you know, ransacking the grocery store, right?

And Jerry pops the two guys that are going after his wife.

And then a cop runs in and Jerry's all ready for like, you know, surrender the gun type of a thing.

And cop not even got the blinders on, is going straight in.

And that kind of gets you going, like just how quickly everything is gone to shit and how nobody cares and just it's it.

So there's a few, like really cool snatches of brilliance in there.

And I like.

The other part that I really enjoy is the idea of, you know, hunting for patient zero.

But there's no like magical miracle, you know, solution or even find it.

It's almost a real progression of go here, Go here.

Oh, we can't help you.

We can't help you either.

We'll try this so and so.

It's that kind of futile hunt of trying to figure out where this started and not being able to get there.

Yeah, it's very clever, the airplane scene.

Terrifying though.

See?

No, no, I got a problem with that one.

And it's a similar problem to what I have at the CDC or who, wherever they go to like this zombie who climbed over a wall to get into Israel and just go for broke for people is just casually hanging out in the plane, just waiting until they're conveniently almost to the UK from Israel.

Well, that's not a 45 minute flight.

Yeah, no long ass flight.

It's like 16 hours and the zombies just killed.

No, that's true though.

This is the second time I've seen it because I remember seeing them like, how did this happen now?

Like, they are already in the air for a while.

And that's the fair point.

Like, I liked it that I just.

I like how tense it was, but the origin of it doesn't quite.

How did they make that add up?

Maybe they.

They just completely go, yeah, it's.

That's why it was like.

It's almost like a you to the director or the.

The author of the sto.

Of the book.

Because the same thing, like in the.

When they're in the facility, right?

You have this cool kind of like, you know, sneaky round kind of scene and then it all goes to hell.

So you have a really cool chase scene, right?

But these zombies who we've literally seen like dive bombing to get after a body of flesh and blood are stopped by a door.

Oh, yeah, they stop it.

Yeah.

Open the door real quick.

They come in, close door real quick.

And then they're just like tapping on the glass like walking dead zombies until it's convenient for them to chase a soda can.

When they've.

We've seen that they still kind of like have a brain in the sense that they have direction.

They've seen people go across the bridge, like, yeah, oh, there's people there.

If they can run across the goddamn desert to, you know, pillar up in a.

In a wall.

And so there's all these little things where it's like, that was stupid because you could still have the plot points happen without needing it.

Like, you could still have a really cool plane scene and not have to be like, oh, yeah, this zombie was just, you know, snoozing for 14 hours that they were in flight.

Well, all they have to do is.

And I think this is the implication, right?

Like, they show the plane getting ready to take off and it's driving down the Runway and there's zombies getting relatively close.

All you have to do is do an under the plane shot of a bunch of zombies getting to the wheel of this plane, right.

They're not big enough or strong enough that they're going to fuck up the wheel, but they could certainly.

The way that they just grab a hold of shit and run onto and stuff.

And they show that a lot in this movie.

You just show one getting caught up in the wheel as it goes up.

Now that removes the whole scare tag, the jump scare of him coming out of the elevator, right?

But it puts him in the plane and with enough time, that one, you can't hear the.

That's going on in the belly compartment, the luggage compartment, you can't hear that.

So he could be down there freaking the out trying to find somebody.

And then they've already explained if they don't find.

Find something and there's no stimulation and there's enough noise in the plane, he's not going to be attracted to what's going on in the plane up there.

So they go dormant.

And at that point I'm like, okay, now there's still the tricky part of this dumb shit's got to end up in the airplane elevator.

Right.

So how does that happen?

There's a lot of coincidences to it, but you could have solved the unrealistic piece of where'd this zombie come from?

In this plane by showing a bunch getting to the wheel.

You don't even have to show it getting, like, pulled up with the landing gear.

Just show them holding on to it and trying to climb up and like, then cut it back to the plane and you think, oh, they're safe.

They made it.

It went up.

But he's in there.

But I'm with you.

Like, there's.

They didn't take the time to fill some of these weird gaps to.

In order to have a jump scare.

And then a very intense scene on an airplane.

I have a bigger problem with the grenade throw in the airplane that takes out half like a side of the airplane.

But I was like, dude, you're so.

Everything in that plane until that was.

The wall of that plane goes out is so compressed, and it's like that explosion is going to be scientifically twice as big because of the cabin pressure.

Yeah.

In that plane.

So for it to only blow out a chunk of the wall, like they would have probably.

And I'm.

I don't know enough to know for sure, but my guess would be that it would have blown that plane in half.

And there's no land in that, let alone at least not to the point that anybody survives it, which I also think is a little wild.

Like the way that they.

And good for them.

They showed this thing hitting the ground and the nose of it fell off, and I'm just like, oh, all that.

You're like, are they dead?

He survived.

So, yeah, there.

There's some serious random ass.

Well, and then this, you know, this Israeli sh.

Soldier gets her hand cut off.

Like, that knife is the sharpest knife on the planet.

Because listen, I have done some.

Not to human being, but I've done cleaning of animals before.

And I have done it with some extremely.

And I mean, you look at that wrong and it'll cut your eyeball.

Okay.

Sharp knife, you can't cut through bone in a swing.

You just can't.

And part of that comes from we get this unrealistic nature of like chopping someone's head off with a sword in medieval times because we see it in movies.

Wrong.

They've.

That got embedded.

And it's funny because the one thing that they did get really right was when he whales the one guy with the goddamn crowbar and then he can't get it out of his head.

I'm like, that's realistic.

You slam something like a knife, it would have got to her bone.

And I don't care how sharp that was.

It would have probably gotten partially through it and got stuck.

It wouldn't have cut it off.

Like, he was using a laser beam that just like in 1F.

Seriously, you'd have to swing that some so hard and it would have to be the sharp.

And he just went and it was done.

I was like, nope, not even if she was sitting on an a.

Like some hard surface on the ground.

And that's the other part that she does.

He does it out of midair.

All that's going to do is knock her hand down, which means you lose all the leverage to finish that cut.

Like, that was a magical knife.

Like.

Yeah.

Now you think about it, Hollywood just does that in so many corners.

Oh, explosions, all kinds of things.

And that this movie has a lot of those things.

I think you just have to, like, get sucked in and look past some of that.

But that's also the problem with doing what we do is.

Yeah.

You get so hyper focused on selling.

Because almost every movie that has action related to this, I mean, and it ain't true unless it's like a John Wick style where they're like trying to be as true to form as possible.

But even that's fake is you're like, you know what?

Someone's probably shooting him and he would have died 30 minutes ago.

Well, there's no such thing as a bulletproof suit.

Sorry.

Yeah, even Kevlar hurts.

Like, let's just.

Let's be real.

And he gets shot point blank.

So he's.

Anyway, we digress.

But like, yeah, I mean, it's.

You're not wrong.

Like, realism in.

In Hollywood is especially like a zombie movie.

Come on.

Like.

But there are some places where I'm like, wait, what?

Like, every time I watch that scene happen, I'm like, hang on.

You can't cut her hand off.

Like, he's going through a hot.

Like it has a hot knife through butter.

And then in the next scene, you can't get the crowbar out of the dude's head.

Like, you can't have it both ways.

It's either you have magical weapons.

But why did movies let that happen, though?

Because they have people that, like, they make movies, they know this.

They're just.

Like, the audience is dumb, or, like, it just looks cool and people aren't going to care enough because that stuff happens.

Yeah.

All the time.

There's those discrepancies in, like, almost every movie you see.

And there's some movies that's so bad, you're like, why did the director not change that?

But it happens so much.

It's a.

It's a.

An entertainment thing.

I. I think it's like, well, how do we make this a shock and awe type scene?

Right?

Like, he's got 12 seconds.

You gotta have the hand cut off quick.

And so we got to cut it off in a mere two seconds.

Right?

So.

And even then, if you think logically, like, if he's got 12 seconds, he probably has less than five to get the hand cut off before he gets into the bloodstream enough to infect her.

So it's like, I don't know.

That's the only thing I think of is it's always for the entertainment or the shock and awe of it, or, like the.

Oh, God, what just happened.

But when you stop and think about it, I'm like, that's.

Makes me think of that.

That when the rock movie, it's called, like, the Tower or whatever, where he.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like, there's so many videos of, like, the physics of, like, how far he jumped and where he would, like, what actually would have happened.

It was so, like, just comically like, no.

Like, I'm sorry.

Like, never would even.

Even for, like, the average fan.

It was like, no.

Like, no.

Yeah.

But again, then they just look at the, like, directors, like, don't.

Superhuman.

Like, dude, I don't know.

Movies that are more in realism would.

Be nice because he's got a freaking.

What's the word?

I can't.

He's got a fake leg.

Yeah.

He's not even.

Like.

He's like.

And look, I.

People with prosthetics can do some really amazing, but jumping's not really one of them.

Not off of a helicopter, anyway.

Anyway.

So it's just one of those things where I was.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Like, sometimes they have to make choices to make it look cool.

But I have a heart.

And I've always.

Even before the podcast, I'm like, wait, that's not okay.

It looked kind of cool, but I just wish she Would have grabbed her arm, slammed it on the railing right there and then started cutting and make it two or three chops and she's miserable.

But, like, one clean right through the bone.

Not gonna happen.

Anyway, I am just getting caught up in the details of this silly.

But I.

This movie, I'm with Alec.

I think there's moments in this movie where I'm like, this is cool.

And then there's like.

I'm like, what the am I watching right now?

Like, it's just weird.

And then at the end, like, when they're at the who, there's some serious intense moments in that when they're running through.

And then there's.

And then the, like, the apex of this whole thing is him sitting in that freezer after injecting himself, like, waiting.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I'm kind of bored now.

Like, there's no.

And then we go straight from that into this dialogue, this voiceover of, like, here comes the war.

And I'm like, I don't give a about your war anymore.

Like, now I'm like, so anticlimactic of this final scene that I'm just like, Jesus.

Stupid.

I would rather have been like, this super intense chase to get them out, and they're freaking the out in this room, and they're like, we got to make sure this works.

And then they all inject themselves.

And then, like, the zombies break through, and then they recognize that it worked, right?

So then they can go through and kill these zombies and then do the work of, you know, creating this whatever disease or formulated modified disease that makes them invisible.

But, like, I just would.

I wanted a bigger climax of the film than him giving himself a shot of some unknown, incurable or, like, curable deadly disease that then he just walks out.

Like, just could have done it better anyway, that's my opinion.

Should we rate it?

Kick it off, Madsen.

I'm gonna give this movie.

I'm gonna give it a three.

I think there's.

For the time period it came out in terms of zombie movies and what it represented, I think it was revolutionary making fast zombies.

And I think Brad Pitt's character does a good job moving us through the storyline.

But as we talked about, there's definitely some holes in the narrative.

And this CGI is bad.

And in a movie like this, like, it needs to be good because it's a part of the.

The shock and awe of it all.

But I think there's some great scenes.

Like, I'll always remember the scene of that child that crouches down like basically on the floor while the zombies are running past it.

And as JJ talked about, the concept of how this virus spreads and what it's doing is really interesting.

It's different than all the others.

And I think there's some certainly tense moments in this movie and I think part of it kind of at the end presents like a video game.

Like you're kind of playing the last of us.

You got to sneak around and make it happen.

But as Jay just talked about, I don't think the payoff at the end is exactly what we were hoping for.

And it's maybe because they were originally thinking they were going to do like a second and a third and that might be part of the problem.

And then it never got fast tracked again.

And maybe that was part of it because I would like to think they would have had a better climax at the end if they'd known.

Hey, we don't know if we're gonna get another one so let's make sure it's good.

But it's a three.

Will I ever watch this one again?

I've seen it twice now.

Probably not.

Probably not.

And I'm okay with that.

But I think it was enjoyed seeing in theaters.

It was, it was fun to watch it again but eh, it'll just fade into the ether.

Yeah, I'm gonna give it a two.

I want to give it better, but then I also want to give it lower.

It's one of those movies where it's like what I really hate, I really hate.

But what I really like is really, really good.

And I, I do like the concept of the zombie ism and how it works and I like the idea.

I've always enjoyed like a little more threatening level zombie than like the barely walking type zombie even unless you have a bunch of them, you're never going to get overwhelmed in that situation.

I will say.

I don't know, like I'm.

Yeah, I'm with you.

I think I wanted a better payoff at the end.

I want a better cgi.

I want to like it too because the book is so good.

But I think the book, if they did what the book talks about, it would have turned into a movie that Matson would have despised because it would have been very slow and very character driven.

Because it's about the politics of the zombie war, like human nature and how people become shitty in the.

And we see a little bit about of that in the like what Alec talked about with the cop and like the, the city when it all starts to go to hell.

And even in, like, Israel, like, we see the other side of it where this, you know, what is typically looked upon as a nation that is very.

They're going to close their borders and shut everything down, and they're letting people in, in the midst of a very dangerous time to let unknown quantities of human beings into your city.

But they're doing that.

And he says that moment where he's like, hey, anybody we can save is.

Is great, you know, so it's like they do have some of those political pieces or those human nature pieces from the book that they talk about in the book.

But there's so much good in the book about how nasty we humans can be in the.

In the wake of.

Of tragedy and this shitty things.

And also on the flip side, like, how amazing and wonderful human beings can be in the same circumstance, right?

Depending on your point of view and how you handle things and then the situation that you're in.

So I wanted to see a little bit more of that.

And again, to your point, maybe it would have come in movie two and three, but they just didn't do a good enough job on this one for it to warrant two and three is what I'm assuming.

But yeah.

So two for me, I. I don't know.

Like I said, it's one of those things.

There's no in between in anything in this movie.

I either hate it or I'm like, that was dope.

So it probably gets a little higher than my brain wants me to give it, but that's where I'm at.

Alec, poo poo it, my friend.

There you go.

I will say, so.

I struggle with this one because you can do kind of when it comes to movies, in my opinion.

You can do whatever you want and you can break off a source material, but it's got to be cool if you do.

Yeah.

And this movie isn't as cool as it could be.

Like, I go think about the.

The kind of.

The big moment, right, that climax where you're in the CDC and sneaking around.

And then in comparison to like, I Am Legend, where he's in the bank and he's got the COVID the flashlight going up and down.

Like that's at the beginning of the movie, right?

That's what's setting you up.

And to just compare, like, those two moments.

Like, well, one of them is really cool.

The other one, when in.

When you compare, it's like, ah, man, like, you could have been really good, but it's almost like you got lazy or you were relying on possibly a second and third one to really ramp it up, and so it falls flat.

And then I also have a real problem with the timing of this, because another thing I really enjoy is this concept that he learns in Israel about the 10th man.

Right.

Who's his only job is if nine other people.

That's a really cool concept.

And then it spills into this fact that, oh, yeah, we started building this giant fucking wall, by the way, when we heard about zombies in India.

But then I'm like, okay, well, what's the timeline of this thing?

Because there's a lot of people in India, right.

If.

If outbreak happens there.

I mean, you.

Yeah, it's day.

You got a day.

And it's.

Yeah.

You know, snowballed enough to get out of control, and still, you know, Israel had enough time to build a giant wall around Jerusalem and finish it just in time before this happens.

And so you have this kind of.

It's hard for me to nail down the timing of what's going on or anything like that, because it just doesn't seem to make sense.

Or it's like, how did you prepare for this?

If your first clue that it was happening is already that it happened and now you're fighting the clock or all these little things.

So it's like.

Or, you know, this communique out of this base in South Korea is like.

You know, it makes you think, like, oh, we got this a day and a half ago.

Yeah.

Right.

Or two days ago.

But in this entire time, you know, the whole world's lost or whatever.

So it's.

It's hard for me to follow.

And the moments where you could have made it really cool, instead you had stupid CGI waves of zombies that just crash into each other like water and not flesh.

So it's like, oh, that's a. I mean, I. I watch this movie pretty frequently, actually.

Now I think about it like I've seen it a good half dozen times, but it's.

It's a background noise movie.

Yeah.

And it's usually someone else has put it on, and so I can look up real quick.

Yeah, that's funny.

The guy shot himself.

The doctor shot himself.

He's gonna fix the virus.

That's funny.

And then, you know, go back to doing whatever I was doing.

And so it's a one for me.

I don't like this movie at all.

Fair enough.

Certainly not the best pick of Brad Pitt.

No.

Well played, Matson.

Definitely well played.

I like that hairdo for him, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, he didn't have a whole lot of wins in this.

No.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Not good.

All right, well, there it is, man.

That's the end of Brad Pitt month.

We're moving on to John Cusack month next month.

But before we do that, Alec, tell everybody where we can find them.

Where they can find us.

Wow.

Well, we can find you guys wherever you are.

No, you guys can find us on YouTube.

That's the best place to find our smiling faces or frowny faces or pissed off faces when we have to watch stupid movies.

Other than that, find us on Patreon at What's our verdict?

Reviews.

Patreon.

We put up categories every month for different movies that we want to do.

Sometimes based around actors, theme, genre, or, you know, just, you know, fuck with Matson month.

That's one that I want to come back and circle back to and so you can get involved there, vote on a topic, and then we select some movies that correlate to that topic and you guys can vote again on which ones that we watch for the month.

This means a lot to us and bragging rights are always on the table.

So, you know, go, vote, pick my movies, don't pick anybody else.

I've had a couple stinker months.

And then Behind a good ADB paywall, there is over 600 extra videos that range anywhere from bloops to outtakes to random conversations, all the way up to full length episodes of movies that nobody should ever watch.

Speaking of that, shout out to our current patrons, Rick and Charles.

Appreciate you all.

So join us.

What's our favorite Patreon?

Extra content, a little bit of paywall.

But voting is absolutely free, so you can go join there.

Select the movies that we do and talk about and are forced to watch.

And with that, I will kick it back to the Titan of Terror, the Saltine of Swat.

A jj.

Yes, sir.

Thanks, Alec.

Yeah, go check us out.

You have a good time?

I swear, maybe most of the time we're pretty funny.

A lot of times only when we're not trying to be.

I think, though, we're hilarious.

That's right.

All right, well, there it is.

We appreciate you tuning in and we'll catch you on the next one.

Hasta la vista, baby.

Cinematic.