60 Minute Writing: Home Invasion
The Best Part of WWZ: Zombie Cluster Fucks
Okay, so I watched two movies in one week that could be classified as Home Invasion Narratives - The Purge and World War Z. In both movies, the American Nuclear Family is threatened by “evil” forces. In The Purge, Ethan Hawke and his family fight off invaders who have come to wreak havoc the one night of the year when American suspends all law and emergency services and people are allowed to go out and murder each other for kicks - they purge their “natural” rage and hatred. In WWZ, Brad Pitt travels the globe attempting to conquer billions of zombies and the epidemic that caused them to save his family. The Purge is actually a very tight, interesting, entertaining film. WWZ is a dreadful bore.
It’s interesting to compare the two movies - why one works and the other doesn’t. I’ll start with World War Z.
WWZ has all the ingredients to make a great zombie film. It has excellent cinematography capturing the globe - from congested streets of NYC, dark dingy massive housing projects (housing projects always make good zombie fare), to dark and rainy South Korea, and even a walled up Jerusalem. The colors are saturated yet dingy. The world seen through the camera is definitely a gorgeously squalid post-apocalyptic landscape ripe for a zombie invasion. There is only one problem. The movie sucks.
WWZ sucks for a lot of reasons. It features a shitty screenplay, terrible editing, and the dull piece of wood that Brad Pitt has become. All that aside, the primary reason it sucks is because it is a zombie movie that is not in the least scary, and it’s not scary because the movie is completely lacking in tension. You can get everything that is good out of it from the trailer and leave it at that.
The movie itself is like a never-ending trailer. The action moves at an incessant pace that is actually so fast and so lacking in variation that it’s a bore. Yes, WWZ is a boring action movie that maintains the same tempo for almost the entire duration of the film. The movie never slows down long enough to deliver any tension. Brad Pitt hits the ground running to save his family, and then it’s just noise and chaos and Brad Pitt’s face from scene to scene to scene.
There are times when some tension could possibly build - a scene with a Spanish speaking family in the housing projects, a scene with a cold-hearted pragmatic US military leader in South Korea, and the scene in walled-off Jerusalem, but every single scene is brushed over too quickly, the sole outcome being: “What is Brad Pitt going to do next?” I’ll tell you what he does: nothing interesting! He just sticks his big Brad Pitt face in the camera, looks serious, and moves from scene to scene with his furrowed worried brow. The movie never slows down, and therefore never creates breathing room so the zombies can materialize as a source of tension and terror (the Double T).
In any movie or book, tempo change is critical. In a zombie movie, tensions are multilayered. There are tensions between the living and the zombies, between the government and the civilians, and between the survivors themselves. WWZ contains NONE of these.
Zombie narratives are ultimately tales of survival. The excitement and tension of their stories are as much about the tensions between the surviving living people as they are about the living battling the living dead. Zombie movies are studies in self-preservation and the ends people will go to to survive. There are always little mini civil wars within zombie narratives - between those who stay committed to the “group” and those who are “free agents” looking out for themselves. This division drives tension between characters. When it comes down to survival, people will go to extremes and throw their ethics and loyalties in the trash can, and that's a large part of what makes zombie movies interesting.
In WWZ, there is ZERO tension between any of the living characters. Everyone is too good, and things are resolved too easily. The United Nations guy is good. The Israeli girl soldier who gets bit by a zombie never remotely threatens to become a zombie. We should be worried that she’s going to get all feral and shit. She never does! We never worry! The World Health Organization people are good. No one is a traitor. There is a little bit of background stuff about how only indispensable employees are allowed sanctuary within the United Nations, but that’s never taken to any interesting degree. Brad Pitt is totally single-minded, plowing forward in a straight direction like a tank with an American flag pasted to the side of his head. Certainly the fact that he’s Brad Pitt doesn't help. He is dull as a stick. In fact, he IS the living dead.
The Worst Part of WWZ - Brad Pitt
To top it off, the soundtrack fluctuates between teasing us with some okay zombie movie music and then relentlessly assaulting us with that horrible pounding dramatic score that pummels every Hollywood action movie.
The movie goes way too fast. The only time it slows down long enough for us to see what a zombie actually looks like is during a scene in the World Health Organization when Brad Pitt comes face to face with a zombie. But then, Brad Pitt drinks a Pepsi and disengorges a soda machine to fill the screen with rolling cans of Pepsi, so really I think it slowed down in this one scene as a commercial break for Pepsi. The scene in the housing project could have been really great as the two families come together against the zombies. But instead it’s like, "Here's some food. Oh the zombies are coming. We gotta go. Bye." Likewise, the Israel scene could have been really interesting but it just felt contrived, as in “Let’s throw in Israel with Israelis and Palestinians living in peace behind the wall that’s blocking the zombies. In fact, let’s let their songs of peace attract the zombies and bring down the wall! That will be deep!” But instead it’s just shallow. There’s no there there. The best part of the movie and that scene is when a massive throng of zombies scales the wall and brings Jerusalem down. They should have done the same for the entire movie early on and saved us the headache.
Really the best parts of the movies are the scenes when the zombies operate en masse like a single writhing organism. Oh, and the aerial shots are good. But the movie seriously needed to take a lesson from the Great Granddaddy of zombie movies -- Night of the Living Dead. In NOTLD, the relationships between the living people inside the farmhouse drive as much of the film’s tension as the encroaching zombies outside. The politics of survival play front and center. WWZ has none of that, so therefore I give it a D for Dud.
Dad Against the Home Invaders
This brings me to The Purge, which isn’t a great movie but is a masterpiece compared to World War Z. The Purge occurs over one night in a gated American community. Another dystopian narrative, the film takes place in the near future when the American government has created an annual Purge, a 12 hour period each year when all law and emergency systems are suspended. People are allowed to go out and wreak havoc - rob, kill, etc. - with no consequences.
The film is set in the insulated community where the not as bad white people (Ethan Hawke and family) live amongst the really bad white people. Ethan Hawke made his money out of selling security systems to the really bad white people to protect them from the evils that are wrought on American during The Purge. Of course, security fails, which is part of the narrative.
From the very beginning, tensions between the characters are fraught. There are tensions within the family, tensions within the neighborhood, tensions between ideals and politics. In fact, the movie is so masterfully full of tension, that it comes off as apolitical even though it is clearly a statement about the American political landscape. The National Anthem is part of the soundtrack for godsakes.
When the action unfolds, Ethan Hawke’s family ends up harboring a black homeless veteran. Ethical choices are forced on the family. Do they throw the guy out to the Rich White Wolves or give him sanctuary and fight back? Clearly the rich have it made, hiding behind their security while the poor are like rabbits ready to be picked off with rifles.
Gun Toting Mommy
And there is no shortage of rifles. These are gun toting Americans. They are armed to the teeth. But even the use of guns in the film is ambivalent. There is no way to tell if the movie is pro-gun, anti-gun or just a kind of inflated “realism.” Americans have guns. That’s how it is. In the end, guns save the day, but they also kill people. There is no easy answer. Clearly this is a lot more interesting that WWZ already.
The Purge is only 81 minutes long, and those 81 minutes are packed. They are taught and tight, playing on the best components of Home Invasion Narratives while also creating a kind of dystopian Stepford story. There is plenty to chew on and lots of complexity in the characters. Hawke’s wife appears to be a politically correct WASP who wants to stop the violence, but at the same time she has no problem beating the living fuck out of the neighbors when her children's lives depend on it. We are never sure what side this film is on, and that is what makes it interesting. In WWZ we always know the movie is on Brad Pitt’s side, and frankly he and his family get off way too easily. There are no easy outs or easy answers in The Purge, and that’s why it’s a better film.
Endnote: I’ve really been enjoying the multiplex this summer even when the movies suck. After all, it’s going to be 114 degrees this week. A good time to be in the movie theater. Note that I am not throwing Man of Steel into the mix here during my multiplex report because the movie sucked SO BAD that I walked out of it and demanded a refund after 45 minutes of fantasy art dreck. GOD IT’S HORRIBLE. However, I did go to the cheap seats today and watch Jurassic Park in 3D and that was a hoot. One of the things about quitting caffeine is I beat myself up a hell of a lot less and relax a lot more, so I went to the cheap seats and watched early 90s pants and hair in 3D! Jesus H Christ, Laura Dern's pants are up to her chin. For the record, I NEVER WORE PANTS LIKE THAT. I wore men's 501s back then. Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to see myself from the early 90s in 3D. Cringe. Talk about dystopia . . .
FYI - I NEVER dressed like this.
Okay. Off I go to fold laundry. Over and out.
Click to viewWorld War Z Trailer
The Purge Trailer