Army of the Dead movie review: Netflix, Zack Snyder zombie heist flick lacks brain and bite

Language: English

If every zombie movie could be seen as a feature-length commercial for cremation, Army of the Dead is, first and foremost, a vehicular fellatio PSA. The apocalypse in Zack Snyder’s new film begins in the most ill-advised Las Vegas way: a just-married couple consummate their marriage in a car, which slams into a military convoy carrying a payload from Area 51. The subsequent outbreak is chronicled in the most Zack Snyder fashion: topless zombie showgirls and Elvis impersonators chomp on the gamblers of Sin City’s casinos in a slo-mo montage set to a lounge cover of “Viva Las Vegas.”

In parallel, the extended opening montage establishes the primary and some secondary characters — few of whom don’t even make it to the end of the sequence — try to contain the outbreak within Las Vegas so as to not let it sweep the whole nation. Over time, the US president decides Las Vegas is a lost cause, and decides to take the most American option: nuke the hell out of it. But a couple of days before the city turns into a wasteland, a billionaire hires a team of mercenaries to recover $200 million from his casino’s vault. It’s an impossible mission behind enemy lines in the vein of The Guns of Navarone, but with zombies and a heist added for good measure. The movie’s point essentially comes down to Snarl, Bang, Boom, Splat, Zombie tiger roar, Cha-Ching, repeat.

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[caption id=“attachment_9634991” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Army of the Dead[/caption]

Leading Snyder’s “Suicide Squad” is Dave Bautista as battle-hardened Scott Ward. To reveal his gentle giant side, we get a broken family dynamic with Ella Purnell as daughter Kate, and a “have-they-or-haven’t-they” dynamic with Ana de la Reguera as Maria Cruz. Omari Hardwick as philosophising gladiator Vanderohe and Matthias Schweighöfer as nervy safecracker Ludwig Dieter bring some of their own yin-yang comic chemistry. Snyder doesn’t put too much flesh on the bones of any of these characters. Tig Notaro is Marianne, a wise-cracking helicopter pilot who is their ticket out of Las Vegas. Raúl Castillo is Mikey Guzman, who vlogs his zombie kills. Samantha Win plays his friend Chambers, and turns out to be a show stealer in one of the film’s rare bright spots. Nora Arnezeder is Lily, the coyote who smuggles them inside Las Vegas. Playing the underhanded element within the team is Garret Dillahunt as Martin, who was once the casino’s head of security. Last but not least — as Snyder tries to give us a regular Crayola box of colourful characters — is Huma Qureshi as Geeta, a refugee desperately trying to get her two children out of Las Vegas.

Zombies were once a personification of unfettered id. Driven only by impulse and no conscience, the living undead shambled down cinema’s pathway straight from George Romero’s imagination into the hearts of every horror fan. There was a singular power and tension to the slow zombie because it embodied our most primal fear: the always lurking inescapability of death. To keep pace with the frenzied spiral of modern life, zombies got faster, meaner and smarter. The zombies of Army of the Dead have their own rule of law and hierarchy.

Being Snyder, the mythology is poorly defined but this is how the hierarchy plays out. There are the shamblers. As the name suggests, they are the traditional Romero variety. There are the Alphas, who could possibly compete in the Olympics. Hell, they are so agile they could potentially start their own parkour channels. No more slaves to just their appetite, they display intelligence and emotion. They all answer to Zeus, the zombie who turned them. He is the king of the zombies, and he’s got himself a pregnant Queen. And if you’ve seen the trailer, you will know there’s a zombie tiger too in his army.

[caption id=“attachment_9634981” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Army of the Dead[/caption]

Snyder isn’t rewriting the genre’s grammar here. Romero himself did that in his later films as zombies began to remember their past lives and showcased improved motor and cognition skills. In Land of the Dead, a zombie leader akin to Zeus led a Marxist insurrection against Dennis Hopper, who was the manifestation of the evils of capitalism. Snyder can’t articulate his politics as clearly. There is a camp where refugees are ill-treated, and a coyote who smuggles those looking for a better life. The inarticulate president is a clear Trump stand-in. But this subtext doesn’t evolve into any substantial comment.

True, no one goes to watch a Snyder movie for subtext or subtlety. What we can expect from him is to own his silliness. What we can also hope for is a mind-numbing zombie shooting gallery, and he more than meets his quota on that. Only, the novelty of headshots wore off many Fallouts and Resident Evils ago. Gore hasn’t provoked the same visceral excitement since Julia Ducournau’s Raw. The idea of a heist in the middle of a zombie apocalypse sounds great during the planning stage of the movie. But Snyder doesn’t take it very far, save for a scene where the squad must walk through a room full of hibernating shamblers, which evokes the same idea as moving through a laser grid hallway in heist movies. The other unforgivable crime Snyder commits is he gives us a zombie film that doesn’t leave you remotely scared. What Army of the Dead proves is giving zombies personalities will not reanimate a dying genre.

Army of the Dead begins streaming on Netflix from 21 May.

Rating: *1/2