World War Z World Premiere + Two New Clips

Big-budget actioner World War Z, which sees Brad Pitt (also the movie’s producer) in an international race to stop a zombie pandemic, had its premiere in London on Sunday and the first reviews are in. See below for pictures from the red carpet plus two new scenes from the movie.

One of the year’s more intriguing blockbusters, WWZ is based on an acclaimed novel by Max Brooks and directed by Marc Forster whose previous best work has been smaller dramas (The Kite Runner, Finding Neverland). Trailers have also glimpsed some rather spectacular zombie hoards, behaviour Forster has based on nature.

He told Empire: “What is interesting is the way the zombies move. I was looking at nature and how ants move. They’re having this feeding frenzy, and when they’re going after the last resources they build this tower of babel, this building of disease. In a sense, [the zombies] are moving fast in a feeding frenzy and need stimulation, otherwise they’re roaming and slow. When a shark smells blood he attacks; otherwise he’s just roaming around.”

But the movie has its doubters who cite very public production troubles, complaints that the story diverts too heavily from the novel, and the neutering effect of a PG-13 rating.

A handful of reviews have surfaced since the Sunday screening, all from the British press. Here’s a sample of that initial reaction…

Total Film: Taking the multiple viewpoints of Max Brooks’ bestselling novel and cramming them all into Brad Pitt, Forster’s aerial view of the apocalypse might lack nuance but it more than makes up for it with scale… there’s never been a more impressive horde of flesh-eaters on the big screen.

The Times: More an action blockbuster than a horror squelcher, it contains spectacular crowd scenes that have an Hieronymus Bosch quality, but the film lacks strong meat — of the emotional and bloody zombie-cannibal sort.

Daily Mail: Virtually all the violence takes place fractionally off-screen. Disappointingly, the final product is much more conventional than the book and avoids its most interesting and innovative qualities… Parts are impressive and exciting. But the incredibly long distance it falls short of its source material means it must rank as one of Hollywood’s most wasted opportunities.

Telegraph: In the Israel sequence we see Boschian wide-shots of zombie hordes coursing down streets and sluicing over barriers like a great, monstrous flood. This chimes with the footage of swarming insects in the opening titles, and suggests that the film may have once had a point to make before the rot set in. But there’s no heart to be found amid the guts.

Decide for yourself when it lands in cinemas – in 2D and 3D – on June 20th.

Photos from the Leicester Square premiere in London…