[Film Review] Army Of The Dead (2021)

Zack Snyder has returned to zombie movies, and the way some people reacted to the news you would think it was the second coming of the zombie movie messiah. His 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead whilst being mindlessly entertaining in places suffered from a bad case of Stupid Horror Movie Decision Syndrome, having too many characters that it is hard to give a darn about any of them, and a complete lack of any of the satire and thematic meat that made Romero’s 1978 original the gold standard for just about every zombie movie since. However, that was Snyder’s first film as a director and a lot can change in over 15 years, and now he’s back with Army of the Dead for Netflix. In a way, I cannot blame him for wanting to get back to his movie roots after the last few years and a certain hullabaloo that was a certain superhero movie. After all that, I know I would want to mush undead things into goo as well. So how does Army of the Dead shape up? In some ways better than you might be expecting, and in others a fair bit worse.

Years after a zombie outbreak has devastated Las Vegas, mercenary Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) is approached by casino mogul Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) for a job; to retrieve a fortune from a vault under Tanaka’s property on The Strip, and get out of Las Vegas before the government nukes the area in 3 days time. Ward puts together a team with old allies mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Ruguera), philosophising tool guy Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick) and pilot Peters (Tig Notaro), essential safe cracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), sharpshooting zombie influencer Mikey Guzman (Raúl Castillo) and his associate Chambers (Samantha Win), Lily (Nora Arnezeder) a “Coyote'' skilled in getting people in and out of the city, and Martin (Garret Dillahunt), Tanaka’s right-hand man looking out for this boss’ interests. The team is ready for a simple in and out job, but things are complicated by the discovery that what awaits them in the city are not your usual zombies but Alpha Zombies, smart and skilled hunters led by Zeus (Richard Cetrone), the patient zero of the original outbreak. Then there’s Ward’s estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) who has her own reasons for needing to enter the dead city.

The script for Army of the Dead has existed in some form or another since 2007, conceived after Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake as a follow on from that, but has gone through several changes into an original story. Thankfully, one of the changes has been dropping a plot element about the super Alpha zombies raping human women to create hybrid babies. It has the “go into a dangerous environment to get something or rescue someone” setup that we’ve seen a lot since Escape from New York, and even recently saw in a zombie context with Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula, but also with a bit of Aliens thrown in, and not just because Chambers seems to be cosplaying as Vasquez. 

Speaking of aliens, the movie also hints at an extraterrestrial origin for the zombie virus here (the film opens at Area 51), which does give it a bit more wriggle room in how much it strays from the usual zombie formula with its harder better faster stronger Alphas. After all, if you get too far away from the core ideal of what a zombie is, you might as well be dealing with mutants, cavemen, or anything else that does not necessarily have to be the undead. There are also the usual variety of zombies thrown in as well though, referred to as “Shamblers”. The zombie effects are great, with the standout being the Alpha Queen played by stunt performer Athena Perample and are for the most part purely practical. 

Our cast of characters are simple, but in a way which means that you get exactly who they are as soon as you meet them and they are fun to spend time with. Dave Bautista is an actor that plays everything he does with absolute sincerity. This man could act in a Candyland movie and I would 100% believe him. Hiroyuki Sanada does his usual thing of being great, and then disappearing from the movie before you can really enjoy anything he is doing. Oh, how I long for the day that a Hollywood movie doesn’t waste this man and his talents. Tig Notaro was a late addition to the film, cast after principal photography had finished to replace actor Chris D’Elia after news of serious allegations of sexual misconduct with minors came to light. Notaro was shot on a greenscreen by herself and then re-inserted back in the film. It reportedly cost a few million dollars, but it’s something that unless you know that it was done you wouldn’t notice it off-hand, and the fact that Snyder and Netflix took the time and that cost to do it is something I highly respect. She’s also just a great part of the film; all dry sass and swagger that is just entertaining to watch. Ultimately though, this is a zombie movie and as fun as the characters can be it would be folly to get too attached to anyone, and when they do start getting picked off through various gory means, it has about as much emotional impact as watching someone play a video game.

Zack Snyder does have good elements as a director, and all are on display here; he knows how to frame action as long as you keep him from overusing the slow motion, he has a knack for title sequences, he has a skill for matching a song to a set piece, and he is also capable of executing some bonkers ideas that other directors would never commit to. The problem is that there isn’t enough of that. When the movie leans into the nonsense, exemplified by Valentine the zombie tiger or a scene where the crew use a shambler to set off the “deterrents” on their way to the vault, it’s great. What’s not great is how long we have to wait between those moments. At just shy of two and a half hours, and the actual arrival in Las Vegas not happening until an hour in, the movie is too long and takes itself too seriously to really be the parade of crazy ideas that the words “Las Vegas zombie heist movie” conjures. We even see a taste of some of the specifically Las Vegas themed antics in the opening title sequence, but that’s all we really get. If Snyder had just doubled down on that, just embraced everything B-movie silly that comes to mind with the concept, this could have been a great time. It would have been like a great movie adaptation of the video game Dead Rising 2, which is set in a new gambling playground after the zombie devastation of Las Vegas and features wacky homemade weapons, ludicrous psychopath enemies, and there is even a tiger, albeit a non-zombie one. But Snyder, as Snyder tends to do, overreaches and stuffs the movie with so much you end up feeling a little lost. A zombie heist movie is enough, we did not need to also have a double rescue plot, the hints of aliens, cyborgs (look out for Alphas with blue glowing eyes and what appears to be metal skin after they get shot), and a heavy-handed speech theorising about time loops and their doomed fate as a repetition of itself. The cramming in of so many ideas is probably the cause for the pacing of the film being very uneven, especially in the last act. The cinematography is that usual Snyder aesthetic of looking a little washed out, with the added “bonus” of not quite being in focus a lot of the time. Then there are the things that never really pay off, like Lily the Coyote saying that shamblers who have shut down and shrivelled out in the desert heat wake up again in the rain. That is a brilliantly terrifying image and the making of a great and tense sequence, but we never get it. 

There’s so much about Army of the Dead that is so close to being something great and fun, but it’s just too long, too packed in with ideas that don’t quite work, and too poorly put together to be a truly effective injection of new life into the zombie genre it so clearly wants to be. 

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