Ridiculously fun or excessively indulgent. Army of the Dead can come off as either, depending on how much slack you are willing to cut its maker. Zack Snyder, whose four-hour-long Synder’s Cut, his version of 2017’s Justice League that dropped in March, still has the house divided, goes back to where he started from.
In 2004, making his debut in the feature film space with the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Snyder gave a much-needed boost of life-energy to the undead genre. In Army of the Dead, that dropped last weekend on Netflix and has released in select theatres around the world, the film-maker attempts a mash-up, often going all out and bombarding the viewer with the genre’s fun indulgences as well as its worst excesses.
In Army of the Dead, Snyder gives the undead an upgrade. An army of zombies is now running rampant in Las Vegas, having taken over the city’s most iconic landmarks. In this apocalyptic zombie-heist film, the creatures are divided into two tribes: The Alphas and The Shamblers. There is also a zombie tiger. Towards the end, much like a classic Western, an Alpha comes riding in on a zombie horse. As expected, there’s plenty of gore — brains are blown off, guts spill out, gunfights are common. Does all of it make for some good ol’ zombie fun? Yes and no.
Snyder assembles a winner of a soundtrack, fitting them beautifully into the film’s action. Elvis Presley classics are thrown in for a throwback feel, along with a couple of well-timed covers that capture the film’s inherent surrealism. There is Culture Club to Control Machete and a generous sprinkling of the Cranberries, with a cover version of Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas used for a stunningly shot opening credits sequence (zombie strippers murdering their customers in the bathtub; a paratrooper descending into a flesh-hungry mob ready to devour him whole; Vegas’ mini-Eiffel Tower crushing a zombie Elvis impersonator), perhaps the best since the credits in Snyder’s own Watchmen.
The premise, however, is a haphazard banding together of everything that’s too familiar. The towering Dave Bautista plays Scott Ward, a former mercenary with a reputation for taking on the undead, whose boring life flipping burgers takes a turn when Japanese casino owner Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) offers him $50million to extract a $200million bounty from zombie-infested Vegas before a nuclear bomb is dropped by the US government on the city, fittingly on July 4. In true Danny Ocean style, Ward assembles a ragtag team to carry out the heist, giving the viewer a feel of everything from Aliens to Oceans, Escape from New York to the recent Peninsula.
Army of the Dead hits the ground running, but then takes too much time to introduce the back stories of each of its characters. Scott’s estranged relationship with his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) provides the film’s soft core, but Synder and his team of writers don’t really hit the high notes with the film’s emotionality. The humour strikes home at certain points, but the film’s slow pace — Synder still needs to learn when to rein it in — proves to be its undoing.
For fans of the genre, the excessive gore may seem satisfyingly true to its premise, but the stomach-churning mish-mash of heads being blown to bits and necks being chomped at, may make it tough for the average viewer to go in for seconds. And yes, there is the promise of a sequel in Army of the Dead’s final moments.
Our very own Huma Qureshi pops in for a bit to play a refugee single mother named Geeta, and though Huma is suitably earnest and fits the part, this is a sketchily written role that doesn’t contribute anything to the plot. Man mountain Bautista may fall short when it comes to expressions, but give him an action sequence to ace and watch him go in all guns blazing. That unrelentingly entertaining and edge-of-the-seat gunfight in the casino, breathlessly filmed by Snyder himself, is one of the film’s top moments.
Army of the Dead is painted in broad strokes, is too derivative and definitely too long. There are far better and more seminal films in the undead genre to pick from. But if you are looking for some popcorn entertainment full of gore and guts this lockdown, you could give it a shot. Just have a stomach strong enough to not throw up into that popcorn tub.
