World War Z

"Movement is life" says the everyman hero of this big-budget adaptation of Max Brooks's apocalyptic novel, but it most certainly means death, too, when hordes of zombies literally rain from the sky. Brad Pitt plays the former UN troubleshooter who must scour the globe in an attempt to find the cause of the cataclysmic pandemic that's transforming Earth's population into swarms of the undead. However, these ghouls aren't the shambling slowcoaches of George A Romero's Dead saga; they are more akin to the swift 28 Days Later variety, and can turn the living into feral fiends in mere seconds. Pitt oozes (a bit too much) serenity in the face of deadly encounters in Philadelphia (played here by Glasgow), Korea, Israel and Wales, particularly as the safety of his family is dependent on whether he survives to report his findings. Zombie flicks are now a ten-a-penny staple of the horror genre, and it's hard to stand out from the pack, but there are one or two jump-out-of-your-skin moments here, and the epic dimension of the tale (including masses of undead scaling the walled city of Jerusalem like an army of ants) is jaw-dropping at times. Fans keen on their zombie yarns sloshing in claret will prefer this gorier extended version of the film compared to the original theatrical cut, but, despite a tense finale in the corridors of a Welsh medical facility, it all ends with a whimper rather than a bang.