World War Z

"Movement is life" says the everyman hero of this big-budget adaptation of Max Brooks's apocalyptic novel, but it means death, too, when hordes of zombies literally rain from the sky. Brad Pitt plays the former UN trouble-shooter who must scour the globe in an attempt to find the cause of the cataclysmic pandemic that's transforming Earth's population into undead swarms. However, these ghouls aren't the shambling slowcoaches of a George A Romero classic; they belong to the rapid 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 depends on whether he survives to report his findings. Zombie flicks have become a ten-a-penny staple of the horror genre, so it's hard to stand out from the putrid pack. Nevertheless, there are a couple of jump-out-of-your-skin moments here, and the epic dimension of the tale (including ghoulish masses scaling the walled city of Jerusalem like an army of ants) is jaw-dropping. But aficionados of zombie yarns sloshing in claret and viscera will probably feel cheated by this curiously bloodless affair, and, despite a tense finale in the corridors of a Welsh medical facility, the film ends with a whimper rather than a bang.