Weekend Watch: Army Of The Dead

Zack Snyder ventures back to Zombie land

Image Credit: Netflix

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Zack Snyder returns to the genre that launched his film career. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite

Zack Snyder is a director who divides film fans – rarely more so than with his recent return to the DC Universe, as his take on Justice League finally saw the light of day, if not a projector since it was launched on HBO Max. I wasn’t a huge fan of the sepia-toned, grimdark, and almost excruciatingly drawn-out superhero slugfest. So it’s a relief to note that while Army Of The Dead runs to more than two-and-a-half hours, it does at least allow for some colour amongst the carnage.

The director, of course, kicked off his film career with a zombie film, 2004’s effective, impressive remake Dawn Of The Dead. That outing boasted a script by future fellow superhero wrangler James Gunn, and one of the reasons Army doesn’t function quite as well is that the screenplay this time is a little more lacking. The basic setup is that zombies are accidentally unleashed on Las Vegas, turning the place into an apocalyptic nightmare of shuffling, flesh-craving deadheads and their Alpha superiors, more evolved zombies with basic thinking skills that have essentially turned the ruined city into their kingdom. Insert your own joke about how that doesn’t seem particularly different for the city as it stands now. Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a veteran of the battle to contain the outbreak and seal off the city, is tempted by an offer from shady business tycoon Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada): break into the city and retrieve millions from a vault underneath Tanaka’s hotel, and his team will receive a cut of the money. Left scraping an existence in a diner, Scott duly rounds up a team and also reaches out to his estranged daughter (Ella Purnell’s Kate), with whom he’s had little contact since he had to kill her mother when she turned into a zombie. Oh, and there’s one other wrinkle – the US government will be nuking the city in a matter of hours. 

All the elements are there, between the rag-tag team of disreputable types Scott recruits to the ticking time bomb (literally), and the different levels of threat from the undead (there’s even a zombie tiger!) The whole, though, is still somehow less than the sum of its parts. Snyder and fellow writers Shay Hatten and Joby Harold make nods towards having the team come across as humans while also focusing on the military mayhem involved in dealing with the zombies, but despite a quality cast (Ana de la Reguera, Matthias Schweighöfer, Omari Hardwick, and Garret Dillahunt among them), they mostly read as tropes, filling familiar personality types and largely there to swap minimal dialogue before the obvious fate of characters in a film such as this. 

Of note is the fact that Snyder had to scuttle to edit comedian Chris D’Elia out of the film following sexual misconduct allegations. The director’s solution was to throw money, his VFX team’s skill, and Tig Notaro at the problem, using CG and greenscreen shooting to paste Notaro into the film as pilot Marianne Peters. It’s an impressive effort, and you can only really see the joins in a few places here and there. Woe betide actors who give cause to be removed from budget-heavy movies during post-production in the future. 

Still, Snyder has slapped some fun visuals on the screen, supported by ironic needle drops on the soundtrack. Bautista proves he can still bring the charm as a leading man as opposed to his usual ensemble work and there are some brief nods to political themes of immigration and, topically (though that probably wasn’t the case from the start), the treatment of those with infections). 

Army Of The Dead never challenges the better likes of George A. Romero’s output, Shaun Of The Dead, or even Snyder’s own Dawn for zombie supremacy, but it’s an explosive, propulsive, and sometimes satirical take on the genre all the same.

Army Of The Dead lands on Netflix on Friday.