(You are now crossing Spoiler City limits; we welcome careful readers!)
From the very start with Night of the Living Dead, the zombie sub-genre has often been used to smuggle in social satire. World War Z has actually a few moments looking at the state of world politics with various countries' response to the crisis, and these are among the film's best moments. From mention of North Korea's unique policy of protecting it's citizens (it's actually scarily believable to see them trying this) to Israel walling itself off, these are the films' main muscles; so it's such a shame they're underdeveloped to the point of atrophy. Most of this political content is either only mentioned in passing, or quickly becomes irrelevant as it turns out not to be much of a defence against the zombies afterall. Speaking of them, I don't wish to get into the whole "fast vs. slow" zombie debate, but they and the ludicrously fast spread of the infection (it literally takes twelve seconds, even in 28 Days Later it took a bit longer) means that the fact that many of these measures seem pretty implausible to put together given the time frame, or that these countries have put these things together and America didn't notice, wonder why or have any sort of intelligence on it.
I've met him!
Speaking on American intelligence, let's talk about our lead, Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane. I'd say lead character, but that would imply he had any sort of characterisation; we establish he likes his family and doesn't find going to insanely dangerous warzones that fun, but that's pretty much it. It's discussed that he's one of the UN's best investigators, but we don't see much evidence of that; in fact his so called "investigative skills" boil down to him being ridiculously lucky most of the time, a few moments of improvisation that wouldn't impress MacGyver and making utterly ridiculous leaps of logic towards the end. Pitt's a fine actor, I like him at least, but he's unfathomably bland here; not bad acting, but he really can't make this character come alive at all. This is most likely down to the script issues, but could also be because he's realised what a hash his production company and the other producers have made of the project; it would explain the somewhat guilty look on his face over the course of this film.
That brings me to the biggest problem here; it's been no secret that film has had some massive production problems, to the point where it went over budget to the point where the finished product is $200m! For a zombie film! Unfortunately, not all of that's made it on-screen, much like most of the original footage; the fact that this film's had tonnes of re-edits, re-shoots, last minute rewrites and frantic post-production is obvious all the way through. There're obviously dubbed in voices, side-characters drift in and out, Matthew Fox was supposed to have a big supporting role, but he's MIA, at one point a character describes the zombies in a completely different way to how they appear on screen, and the final act feels like it's from a completely different film (mainly because it was rewritten on the fly by completely different writers).
It's weird that for a film with a huge, globe-trotting scope, the finale is a very small setting in Cardiff. However, this segment, although introducing some really dumb ideas for the climax, is one of the few with a lot of tension, and where the zombies actually have a bit more screen presence, and not just a faceless and weightless load of CGI. That's right, the main section where this film gets good is when it stops being a blockbuster and tries being a proper zombie movie. Mind, it still doesn't work that well, partially because this has to be one of the most sanitised, bloodless zombie movies ever; Brad Pitt sheds more blood when he's cut then any of the zombies ever do when they're supposedly biting people or even when one character gets her hand cut off! It's not helped by the fact that director Marc Forster, as Quantum of Solace should have amply proved, can't direct action scenes for toffee; shakycam, frantic editing, horrible looking CGI, and zombies that move in almost comical ways (the bites look more like blowing hickeys), and most of the big set pieces end up as masterpieces of confusion (it took me ages to realise in the opening sequence there were even zombies there), with only that more confined final section working out better.
So it does have a few good moments, like Peter Capaldi turning up in the last act (although it would have been far better if he had been Malcolm Tucker during the zombie apocalypse: "You can have some fucking brains when you learn some fucking personal hygiene you dead cunt!") But on the whole the whole thing is a grand mess. The constant reshoots and such make this film that's so obviously expensive (apart from the trip to Torchwood) just plain shoddy looking. The few new ideas it adds to zombie lore are just kind of dumb, the solution to the crisis presented is just ridiculous, and at no point is it actually that scary. It's not actively terrible, it's just really underwhelming, in a "you know you could have made 150 Dawn of the Deads for the amount this one bomb cost" kind of way. Read the book! Or watch one of the other zombie movies I've been putting up trailers for...
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