Review: Netflix and Zack Snyder's "Army Of The Dead"

Netflix and Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is one of the streamers most anticipated releases in recent memory. Work on the movie has been going on for years and there is so much faith in the burgeoning property that Netflix greenlit a host of other projects revolving around the idea. There is a planned sequel, as well as an animated prequel.

Given that, there is obviously a lot riding on the shoulders of Army of the Dead as a franchise starter and the film itself has quite the auspicious start, with a montage of action showing how Las Vegas got overrun by the undead and how former WWE World Champion Dave Bautista contained it. And this introduction has all the traditional Snyder flair: slow motion, riotous set pieces, and children getting saved before making nonsensical decisions and dying, because why not start off a campy action-thriller with a hefty dose of crippling sadness, right? Even so, it all works, somehow, with nude call girl zombies attacking their marks and some very intense and inventive gory murders. Within five of runtime, it’s very clear what this movie is and where it’s going.

Or at least, that’s the intention. But Snyder has always been one to subvert expectations and when things switch gears to the obligatory story setup, with audiences getting a glimpse into the backstory of Bautista’s leading man, Scott Ward and his complicated family history, the story just kind of stays there. Sure, it jumps to other characters and places, such as the refugee camp outside Las Vegas and the harsh conditions the people there have to live in, one of whom is a volunteer who conveniently happens to be Scott’s daughter, but it is all still just set up. And even though there a LOT going on, it all starts to bleed together as so many characters and plot threads get introduced that keeping track of them becomes more laborious than entertaining.

What’s more, the setup becomes the entire first act, with little to no zombie action and an over reliance on lady folk singers covering rock songs. By the time “Bad Moon Rising” starts crooning, barely a quarter of the way in, the movie is already somewhat tiresome. There is just too much happening all at once, but at the same time, not enough. The first hour is filled with endless exposition about past mistakes, a nonsensical casino heist, and getting some random mom’s kids on a bus to take them away from Vegas while the aforementioned parent heads into the city to scavenge for leftover money instead of going with her children and finding work, which is obviously the best thing to do in the situation.

It takes so long for things to move forward that by the time Scott Ward’s team finally does head into the city to skirt past the hordes of undead between them and a vault of cash that the underlying reasoning for what they’re doing it for is all but forgotten and all Scott can do is scream “Kate!” over and over because instead of leading a covert team of mercenaries through a treacherous landscape he has to watch out for his daughter who insisted on tagging along to find the mom who left her kids earlier on. Because, again, that’s obviously the best thing to do in such a precarious situation.

In story terms, this is just the biggest act of absurdity that leads to even more ridiculous decisions from the characters and nothing anyone does makes the least bit of sense. There’s no plan and once they are behind the wall it’s like logic got the boot and everyone just follows whatever stupid idea popped into their brains. It’s like that scene in Ghostbusters when the team is told not to think, and the first thing Ray does is conjure up the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. It’s a bad decision that he thought was innocuous, but it makes everything worse. Except in the case of Army of the Dead, there are like eight people doing that and there’s never an awesome sugary monster that starts rampaging through the streets.

And to make matters worse, every person in the feature is one note. Character development is replaced by a series of odd quirks and snarky retorts, except for Bautista, who’s still stuck only getting to shout “Kate!” and looking around with a slightly constipated look, but there is at least an attempt to provide his character with some depth and justification for his actions. Things are really bad when the best character is a rape-y security guard (played by a gloriously scene chewing Theo Rossi) who gets sacrificed at the start of the mission.

By the time the film is starting to ramp up, pretty much everyone is dead, in large part thanks to Kate and her continually imprudent decisions, which culminate in her choosing to run off into the center of the zombie hive to search for the mom (which won’t matter because even though she finds her, she dies in a helicopter crash). It’s actually kind of refreshing that there are such harsh consequences in a zombie movie and that so many of the ensemble members bite it. It’s more of a realistic outcome, if there was an actual zombie apocalypse. But the deaths often seem unnecessary, rather than unavoidable, and so they fall flat of any emotional resonance and all the audiences are left with is frustration and a lingering inclination to ask “why?”

The hype train for Army of the Dead was packed with genre fans eager to see Snyder return to his action-horror roots, and while that train did rip out of the station, the creative team quickly pulled the e-brake. The movie is a mix of clunky, overly emotional dialogue and blurry visual effects, which might be Snyder’s new favorite thing. But for every zombie tiger that mauls a bad guy, there’s a character making a dumb choice for no other reason than it moves the story forward. Whatever joy could be found in this production is sucked out by unnecessary melodrama that does little more than annoy. There are some genuinely unique ideas, and when the action gets going, it’s really quite good. And for his part, Dave Bautista really does shine, clearly giving the role his all and proving he’s more than capable as a leading man. But even so, it’s not enough to compensate for the lackluster and often confusing plot, erratic pacing, and unexplained additions, like robot zombies. Yes, that’s right, robot zombies. Army of the Dead is a great concept, but its execution sadly falls far short of the idea. This film is better off collecting dust in the back of your Netflix queue with the rest of the movies that sounded cool, but you knew wouldn’t be worth your time.