New-ish at the Movies: World War Z, After Earth and The Hunt

Blood­less zom­bies would appear to be that lat­est trend if April’s Warm Bod­ies and this week’s World War Z are any­thing to go by. No blood means stu­dios get a low­er cen­sor­ship clas­si­fi­ca­tion and — hope­ful­ly — a big­ger audi­ence. But the absence of vis­cera also appears to bring with it a loss of metaphor­ic pow­er. These zom­bies don’t mean any­thing very much; they cer­tain­ly don’t have any­thing to say about the world we inhab­it, or the fears we share. They are vehi­cles for jumps, scares and gotcha moments (or in the case of Warm Bod­ies, not even that).

In World War Z, co-pro­duc­er Brad Pitt plays Ger­ry Lane, not a Bea­t­les song but a dis­il­lu­sioned for­mer UN trou­bleshoot­er try­ing to start a qui­et life with his young fam­i­ly in Philadel­phia. A rapid­ly spread­ing out­break of a mys­tery rabies-like dis­ease turns his — and every­one else’s — life on its head. In a mat­ter of sec­onds the bite vic­tims become almost unstop­pable preda­tors, hunt­ing the healthy in grow­ing packs.

[pul­lquote]The Hunt felt like a beat-up in more ways than one[/pullquote] Lane and his fam­i­ly are evac­u­at­ed to an air­craft car­ri­er where the last remain­ing evi­dence of author­i­ty attempts to restore order. There he unwill­ing­ly sub­mits to his old boss (Fana Mokoe­na) and agrees to help trace the source of the dis­ease and maybe find a cure. With the help of a hand­ful of Navy SEALS and a bright young endocri­nol­o­gist (Elyes Gabel) he trav­els to South Korea where the first reports of the out­break only to find on his trav­els that things are far worse than any­one can imag­ine.

I haven’t read the suc­cess­ful book that World War Z was — appar­ent­ly very loose­ly — based on and I’m not much inter­est­ed in the evi­dent­ly trou­bled pro­duc­tion his­to­ry that required much reshoot­ing. What I can report is that the set-pieces are impres­sive in scale and the vision of civilisation’s rapid ruina­tion is more effec­tive than almost every oth­er CGI-dis­as­ter movie of recent times.

Pitt, him­self, is a sol­id lead, com­ing in to his own in the final act — a sur­pris­ing­ly low-key and per­son­al bat­tle to save the plan­et from a bunch of very British-look­ing zom­bie sci­en­tists: white coats, crooked teeth, pal­lid skin; you have to look pret­ty close to con­firm that they do, actu­al­ly, want to eat you and are not just on their way out the back for a smoke.

But Para­mount Pic­tures spent upwards of $200 mil­lion on WWZ and to what end? It’s effec­tive enough but entire­ly lack­ing in sub­text. I can’t imag­ine I’ll be remem­ber­ing it for long and I’m not in any hur­ry to watch it again.

The same is true for M. Night Shya­malan’s After Earth, a sci­ence fic­tion vehi­cle for the bud­ding career of Will Smith’s son Jaden (The Karate Kid). I can’t imag­ine ever watch­ing it again, found most of it laugh­able while I was watch­ing it, can’t real­ly rec­om­mend it as enter­tain­ment, but — you know — it did try and be about some­thing, even if that some­thing is read­i­ly decod­ed as an advert for the val­ues of Sci­en­tol­ogy.

I tried to put that knowl­edge out of my mind while watch­ing the tale of young Jaden learn­ing to bond with his wound­ed father (Will Smith) and over­come his fear as he locates the spe­cial inter­stel­lar bea­con (shaped like a piz­za cut­ter) that will bring a res­cue par­ty and save them both from an alien crea­ture genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered to smell fear — although not engi­neered to have par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive eye­sight.

Tak­en at face val­ue, After Earth is a flawed attempt at a teen-cen­tred adven­ture, fea­tur­ing fam­i­ly val­ues and der­ring-do. The prob­lem, though, is that you can’t real­ly take it at face val­ue, once you know what’s being pro­pa­gan­dised.

In The Hunt, the great Dan­ish actor Mads Mikkelsen plays a small town kinder­garten teacher. This, in itself, takes some get­ting used to, as he is bet­ter known for por­tray­ing the tor­ment­ed or the dement­ed in films such as Push­er and Casi­no Royale. His char­ac­ter, Lucas, is a gen­tle man, the kind that should be teach­ing our lit­tlies. He’s divorced, a lit­tle lone­ly, but qui­et and decent. The kids adore him.

His life unrav­els, though, the moment one of the chil­dren – daugh­ter of his best friend and hunt­ing bud­dy Tio (Thomas Bo Larsen) – unwit­ting­ly accus­es him of mis­be­hav­iour and the lead­ing ques­tions from an inex­pe­ri­enced prin­ci­pal dig Lucas a hole that his hon­esty and good heart can’t get him out of.

The com­mu­ni­ty turns on him and he los­es his friends, his job and – near­ly – his son. Beat­en up and ostracised, there would seem to be no way out for Lucas, whose life has been ruined by a nar­row-mind­ed witch hunt pro­pelled by gos­sip, fear and igno­rance.

Except, all of this might eas­i­ly have been solved in reel one had any­one – even Lucas him­self – used basic com­mon sense and exer­cised some self-pro­tec­tion. There’s no sign of lawyers, inves­ti­gat­ing author­i­ties or social work­ers and the film makes it seem as if the vil­lage elders are the only law.

This might have worked bet­ter if the film was set in more inno­cent or naïve times – like the ear­ly 1990s of the Peter Ellis case in Christchurch – but it seems unfath­omable to me that a male kinder­garten teacher in this day and age wouldn’t know how to pro­tect him­self from this kind of accu­sa­tion.

The Hunt is a pow­er­ful sto­ry, and direc­tor Thomas Vin­ter­berg col­lab­o­rates with Mikkelsen to deliv­er some elec­tric scenes, but it felt like a beat-up in more ways than one.

[Por­tions of this review first appeared in Welling­ton’s Fish­Head mag­a­zine.]