If you've read the book you'll find that the movie is, at heart, a completely different story. And I don't mean minor changes like reversing the races of Melanie and Miss Justineau. I mean deep, fundamental changes that alter the entire message of the story; changes that turn the hero into the villain and the villain into a pathetic tragic hero, and turn a story about hope coming in strange packages into something entirely different.
The book is--in spite of its setting and genre--a deep and thought-provoking look at what it really means to be human. The movie is not. It's just another zombie movie with a (not even too surprising, in the context of the movie) twist.
This movie wastes the abilities of a very talented group of actors. Melanie and Miss Justineau have a bit more depth than the other characters, but Seargent Parks--who is very deep and well-drawn in the book--is reduced to a cardboard-cutout of a soldier. Gallagher--also a multi-faceted character with his own moral message in the novel--becomes nothing more than a means of bringing us to the movie's climax which itself is wildly different than the book. Dr. Carter is humanized in ways totally at odds with the book, and in fact becomes the "hero" of the story, if you can call anyone a hero. And Melanie...well, in the end Melanie is cast as the villain, performing roughly the same actions as she did in the book but with totally different motivations.
All in all, it was a huge disappointment. I was willing to deal with many major plot cuts--I understand that movies simply cannot fit all the material of novel-length works into their time-frame. What I was not willing to accept was the complete reversal of the message of the book...which was this: Pandora opened the box containing all the ills of the world. But she didn't do it as vengeance or out of a feeling of moral superiority...she did it out of pure curiosity. And the result was horrific. She unleashed plague. She unleashed and pestilence and death and destruction. But...she also released hope.
This movie took a grand theme and turned it into a small, squalid cliché. If you loved the book, don't bother. (But do look for the cast, who did an amazing job with the little they had to work with--in other roles.)
The book is--in spite of its setting and genre--a deep and thought-provoking look at what it really means to be human. The movie is not. It's just another zombie movie with a (not even too surprising, in the context of the movie) twist.
This movie wastes the abilities of a very talented group of actors. Melanie and Miss Justineau have a bit more depth than the other characters, but Seargent Parks--who is very deep and well-drawn in the book--is reduced to a cardboard-cutout of a soldier. Gallagher--also a multi-faceted character with his own moral message in the novel--becomes nothing more than a means of bringing us to the movie's climax which itself is wildly different than the book. Dr. Carter is humanized in ways totally at odds with the book, and in fact becomes the "hero" of the story, if you can call anyone a hero. And Melanie...well, in the end Melanie is cast as the villain, performing roughly the same actions as she did in the book but with totally different motivations.
All in all, it was a huge disappointment. I was willing to deal with many major plot cuts--I understand that movies simply cannot fit all the material of novel-length works into their time-frame. What I was not willing to accept was the complete reversal of the message of the book...which was this: Pandora opened the box containing all the ills of the world. But she didn't do it as vengeance or out of a feeling of moral superiority...she did it out of pure curiosity. And the result was horrific. She unleashed plague. She unleashed and pestilence and death and destruction. But...she also released hope.
This movie took a grand theme and turned it into a small, squalid cliché. If you loved the book, don't bother. (But do look for the cast, who did an amazing job with the little they had to work with--in other roles.)