Sadly, after one viewing, I found myself very bored with the movie. I thought the film felt small, like it's scale as a worldwide catastrophe didn't really ring through. I was annoyed with the politics, the shortsightedness of characters, and saddened by the lack of emotional investment I felt.
I just rewatched it now, a year later. Did it deserve the 2.5/5 rank I gave it a year ago? Nope. It didn't. I have to eat my words a bit.
While still not a great movie and filled with the bogus politics (the reason for the wall being built was strange), rewatching it definitely did give me a strong sense of the scale of the situation. I did feel the world wide catastrophe, I felt the gradual collapse, and I felt the stress on humanity as a whole. It felt much more organic, strangely believable and tangible as well. Perhaps this all stems from the best zombie experience of my life, playing "The Last Of Us" last summer. Amazing video game, but more importantly completely shifted and raised my standards for the zombie genre.
It should be noted that upon a rewatch, I found myself far more invested into the action of the film as well. More of it had me holding my breath. I had forgotten the outcomes of many scenes and found myself having fun guessing what was going to happen next, even though I'd seen the film before. But most importantly, I recognized the global scale while still identifying the films personal story, an outsider looking in to a small piece of a larger problem. It worked surprisingly well a second time around, and there was a lot more of the emotion for me to appreciate.
The cinematography is just as brilliant as I remember it, featuring some of the best zombie cinematography I've ever seen. I'll forever have the awesome scene of zombies climbing on top of each other to scale the wall in my mind, as well as the bus flipping over to zombies running head first into gun fire. It all emphasizes the nature of zombies, the lack of self preservation in search of food. It's creepy, foreign, and awesome.
The film isn't without its problems. It still has its hokey dialogue, and it's nearsighted characters. But unlike a year ago, the scale of the film didn't bother me nearly as much. Rather, I appreciated the smaller scale considering the enormous scale of the catastrophe. Brad Pitt was just as good as I remember him being, and the rest of the cast works through hokey scenes pretty well, again considering the material. Even though I can't give the film a super positive review, I have to say it definitely did more for me the second time around than it did the first.
Original rank - 2.5/5
Hindsight rank - 3.5/5
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