KRR: So, 'Army of the Dead' Never Truly Came Alive.

You must forgive me for completely ignoring Zach Snyder's four hour Justice League cut that came out a few months ago. While I do my best to make sure every important movie in the culture gets recognized on this blog, I figured I would save my breath on Snyder until his (only) two and a half hour zombie heist film dropped. Well, Army of the Dead is finally here. So, it's time to talk Snyder. 

If you're unfamiliar with the Netflix sensation that is Army of the Dead - or maybe you're just understandably burnt out from all things Snyder - let me fill you in. Army of the Dead is the long awaited return to the zombie subgenre from Zach Snyder (who rose to fame with the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead). This time however, instead of trapping humans in a mall and surrounding them with zombies, Snyder turns Las Vegas into a quarantined zombie kingdom on the brink of nuclear destruction. Inside Vegas, ground zero of the zombie epidemic, zombies roam free, with no living humans to devour. However, with a nuclear bomb on the brink of detonation over Sin City, and two hundred million dollars still locked away in a casino vault, it becomes one group's goal to extract the cash before there's nothing left of the little zombie oasis. 

Sounds like a great premise right? Dave Bautista leading a motley crew of survivors, including a CGI-ed Tig Notaro, through one of the most wonderous cities in the world, with the goal of pulling off a major casino heist, while battling hordes of undead - how could this not be a super fun time? Well...

 

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

Let me start by saying, it isn't that I don't enjoy Army of the Dead. I do. It's a fine movie. It just could have been so much more. 

Las Vegas was the last out-of-my-everyday-life place I went before the pandemic officially rolled into the United States. It feels like ten years ago that I was in a swarm of people on casino floors and at circus shows, but it was only January, 2020. That a zombiesque epidemic could and would start in the Fabulous Las Vegas is so brilliantly simple and believable that it's shocking it hasn't occurred in major media before now. Las Vegas, as a setting, provides everything a filmmaker would dream of for a zombie movie. 

While most horror films are dark, brooding, atmospheric - Vegas is the opposite. Vegas is a sensory overload of neon, nudity, and gameshow sound effects. It is intentionally disorienting. To keep you dazed and confused, drunk and happy, willing to stay seated at the poker table, is the only real goal of every casino. You stay like that, and Vegas will suck you dry. Unfortunately, that viciously fun Vegas is all but completely lost in Army of the Dead. The posters are all neon, but the movie itself looks like it was filmed on the dark side of the moon.

Every poster for this movie is better than the movie, to be honest.

Besides the opening credit sequence and one notable casino floor scene after, the entire movie takes place in concrete halls, basements, and stairwells, or outside under an orange sun. There's not a single flashbulb of color to be seen in 98% of this damn movie. WHY?!! Snyder! My man! It's Las Vegas, not Detroit! Why is it so dark and dreary?? This was your chance to give us the well lit, fun, eye-popping zombie movie we've never gotten. Instead we got a color palette of sand, cement, and steel. You set this in one of the most brightly vibrant cities on Earth - therefore setting our expectations for it to be a bright and vibrant movie - only to deliver a movie with the same vapid production design as the Iraq War.

But the letdowns only pile up from there. I will admit the cast is loaded with great performances, from established and new stars alike: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Nora Arnezeder, Matthias Schweighöfer, Hiroyuki Sanada, Garret Dillahunt, Huma Qureshi, Raúl Castillo, and Tig Notaro. That's a list of a names that reads like a UN council. You got French stars, Indian stars, Japanese stars, American stars, Spanish stars, English stars, you name it. And while I love this cast, I can't help but feel they aren't given much to work with.

Man, I love seeing hot people do hot things though.

The script isn't particularly funny, save for Matthias and Tig's characters, and the story is so overworked that the only way to salvage it would be to scrap it altogether. For example, one side plot happening throughout Army of the Dead is the search for Geeta, a young ill-equipped mother who snuck into Las Vegas the night before the team did, in order to get some money herself. Even if we ignore all of the blatant plot holes surrounding her storyline (like, how the fuck is she still alive to begin with??), her story's importance goes from least important, to most important, to nonexistent, over the course of forty minutes. Seriously, she disappears at the end of the movie. Not in a "oh my gosh, where is Geeta" sort of way. Nah, it's like Zach Snyder forgot her character existed. She just suddenly isn't there. What the fuck happened to Geeta???

Zach Snyder may have forgot you Geeta, but I never will.

Therein lies the major writing problem with Army of the Dead. It's so focused on beating you over the head with family values, sentimental resolutions, and metaphors (we get it, Vegas turns us into zombies *rolls eyes*) that it loses sight of the actual narrative arc that propels the film. (It also doesn't help that the final five minutes are a meandering and obvious ploy to set up a sequel.) An overwritten screenplay impacts every moment of the film though. The actors aren't able to do as much with their screen time, because Snyder is constantly changing the narrative focus, and the audience is never sure of which story is the most important at any given moment: Are we supposed to be focused on the Swedish kid cracking the safe, the continual exploration of zombie kingdom hierarchies, the search for Geeta, or the hired asshole who clearly wants to leave the rest of the group for dead? All of them is too much to ask an audience to dedicate their time and emotions to at every moment.

Since I may be over-analyzing a movie that's supposed to just be a fun zombie heist flick, I'll return to the realm of the common movie watcher and talk about it as just that: a fun zombie heist flick. It's not. It isn't a particularly fun movie. It isn't a particularly good zombie movie. It isn't a particularly good heist movie. It hits almost none of the marks it needs to. The entire movie is shot out of focus, something done intentionally but that I find very frustrating to simply look at. The CGI swings from great to blatantly bad. It's thirty minutes too long. It's just not special.

Now this movie right here ^^^ This is the shit.

Or maybe it is. I may have made a mistake by rewatching Snyder's Dawn of the Dead before watching this. The 2004 Dawn of the Dead is everything Army of the Dead is not: It's funny, it's fresh, it's scary, it's well-lit, it gives itself room to breathe while never losing narrative propulsion, it's special. It is, quite frankly, one of the best zombie movies of the 21st century. I wish Snyder would get back to making things like that. Things that weren't ripped straight from the comic book section and were a little more simple - like ten people trapped in a mall. 

The Snyder Cut of Justice League gave the filmmaker carte blanche with audiences. It showed we were willing to put ourselves through whatever he wanted to do to us. That Justice League movie was a barrage of overwritten, unfunny, and poorly lit scenes where massive men and women clashed into each other for the sake of action. Army of the Dead is practically no different. 

But it could have been so much more. 

Zombie Tiger is gonna eat me for giving this film a "bad" review.

Army of the Dead KRR: 4.9/10