Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Army of the Dead’ on Netflix, Zack Snyder’s Return to Grisly Form

Netflix’s Army of the Dead is Zack Snyder’s new killin’-zombies movie complete with slo-mo opening credits featuring a man running a massive saw through hordes of the undead, so INSERT SNYDER CUT JOKE HERE. It’s the love-him-or-hate-him director’s return to his roots; his directorial debut was 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, which, along with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, helped thrust zombies back into the cultural zeitgeist. One could see Army as Snyder’s palate-cleanser movie, considering it’s his first film since the Great Justice League Fiasco of 2017 left him in creative limbo — until he was greenlit to reinvigorate the project with a director’s cut, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the four hours of which made our asses numb only two months ago. Which leads us to Army of the Dead, a 2.5-hour thing that has us reasonable members of society wondering if 390 minutes of Snyder is too much for the first half of 2021. Or maybe it’s just enough?

ARMY OF THE DEAD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Army of the Dead opens with a story that’s like that fake meme about how the Colonial Pipeline was hacked because an employee clicked on a phishing email promising photos of boobs: A new wife gives a beej to her new husband as he drives their vintage Lincoln boat to Las Vegas and while in the throes of ecstasy he crashes into a military vehicle carrying Patient Zero of the zombie apocalypse. One might say this is a very unfortunate occurrence. The zombie sheds bullets, because nobody blasts him in the head, compared to later in the movie, when everyone quite consistently scores headshots, proving that the most crucial action necessary to stopping zombies is shooting them in the head when the plot needs them to be shot in the head. Anyway, Patient Zero turns Vegas into a mess of shambling undead Elvis impersonators and topless dancers and gambling addicts, so the government stacks shipping containers in a perimeter around the city, then puts up signs saying that “U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IS NOT IN EFFECT” inside the walls. Neato!

Some time goes by, and during some of that time, Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) worked as a mercenary. He once rescued the Secretary of Defense from zombies, and earned a medal for his bravery. But he also had to jam a knife into his wife’s skull because she turned into a zombie, something I assume was difficult for him, at least as difficult as waiting in line at the DMV. Now he’s a fry cook because life is shit and pain. And he’s estranged from his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), who volunteers helping refugees outside the Vegas border. But opportunity knocks: A rich guy hires Scott to extract $200 million in green-ass cash from a casino vault, and he’ll get $50 million of it to divvy up with his heistin’ squad of zombie murderers. Not a bad haul for quick smash-and-grab, but it’s gonna be a doozy of a day at work, because the President of the United States has controversially decided to drop a nuke on Vegas, like, tomorrow, something he’s quoted in the news as saying is “pretty cool.” So time is of the essence for this crew, who will have to be fast and full of fury.

Scott assembles a crew that’s a veritable Ocean’s 10 of fast and fury-ful types. His right-hand woman is Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera) and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) is the guy with the giganto-saw from the credits. They’re old pals, tight from way back when. They need a safecracker (Matthias Schweighofer) to crack the safe and a helicopter pilot (Tig Notaro) to pilot the helicopter, and a guide/coyote (Nora Arnezeder) to guide/coyote them. The coyote grabs a security guard with rapey-Paul Blart vibes (Theo Rossi) to come along for reasons to be revealed later, and it felt kinda like grabbing some nightcrawlers on the way to the fishing hole. Martin (Garret Dillahunt), a representative of the rich guy, has the Paul Reiser-in-Aliens role. Two influencers (Raul Castillo and Samantha Win) tag along because they can shoot good I guess and also because influencers are annoying and it’d be funny if zombies chewed on their pancreases. Oh, and daughter Kate joins them because she wants to rescue a friend whose guts she hopes haven’t been eaten yet and so Scott can have some emotions when he’s not being really violent. Into the Vegas Hellzone everyone goes, and It’s at this point in the plot where the zombies’ heads are no longer safe.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: People who go on about the Legacy of Romero chap my rash, so you’ll hear none of that talk from me. Snyder shows an array of relatively contemporary, non-zombie influences: Blatant Star Wars references (including but not limited to Millennium Falcon Hyperdrive Failure Noises), not-as-fun Army of Darkness skeletonny deadite-types, neo-zombies that look like they’re the offspring of regular zombies and the Uruk-Hai from Lord of the Rings, Medusa-in-the-Harryhausen-Clash of the Titans vibes, Apocalypse Now-style needle drops and the aforementioned The Fast and the Furious and Ocean’s 11 team assemblages. As for zombie-related influences, it’s a combo of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and World War Z.

Performance Worth Watching: Celebrating technical artistry is boring at the Oscars, but this nod goes to the makeup designers. There’s a closeup shot of a severed zombie head that’s so lovely and detailed, I could have lingered on it for a few minutes, but that was one of the few scenes Snyder actually didn’t shoot in slow motion. That severed zombie head belongs in the Louvre.

Memorable Dialogue: Self-referential ironical nudge-winkiness, via Maria, to Scott: “I swear to god, this whole mission is some insane way to reconnect with your daughter.”

Notaro: “Was that a zombie in a goddamn cape?”

Sex and Skin: The MPAA sez there’s some “graphic nudity” here but it may have been so mixed in with all the graphic violence, it all became a blur of graphicness. There’s also implied zombie sex, which might be worse then actually seeing zombie sex.

Our Take: Army of the Dead, a movie that kept waking up my cat, reestablishes Snyder as a stylish visual storyteller whose penchant for tart comedy has been sidelined in the 17 years since his last zombie saga. If it seems absurd to call a gorefest like this “ebullient,” well, so be it: It’s ebullient. It’s two-and-a-half indulgent hours long, but you won’t mind. It lags a little here and there. But it’s otherwise funny, ridiculous, stupid, violent and stupidly violent, but never quite violently stupid. I laughed, and almost gave a shit what happened, and those qualities — in the context of our ballooning zombie ennui — make it feel like a small miracle. The man who turned Superman into a sourpussed killjoy has been redeemed.

This is not to say the film is without flaw. (One could argue that pointing out said flaws only adds to one’s enjoyment of the film.) The plot holds water like a zombie holds its guts in — that is, not for long. If any border-related political metaphors are intended here, they’re half-assed at best; I chose to actively resist them, and recommend you do the same. The soundtrack is dopey; dropping the Cranberries’ biggest hit at the film’s most “poignant” moment earns ONE MILLION EYEROLLS. There are times when the rupturing viscera is overkill for its own sake, when the movie serves to remind us of two things: One, the super-coolest thing about zombie movies is that every character can be killed twice, bro! And two, every human skull, including mine and yours, is just a bucketful of blood and goo waiting to be unceremoniously splattered on some anonymous slab of pavement, a harsh truth that makes my existentialism hurt like the dickens.

A boon for the movie is the way Snyder doesn’t settle for the usual zombie shenanigans. Inside the Vegas walls is a zombie hierarchy in which zombie society is divided into slow, dumb zombies (“shamblers”) and fast, smart zombies (“alphas”) led by a zombie king and zombie queen who oversee zombie rules and zombie rituals. The zombie king and zombie queen are a striking couple, easily more charismatic than Beniffer in Gigli. You can sense the intense zombie love between them. How do they express that love? How did they become the leaders? Is the zombie tiger their pet? Zombie tiger? Yes, zombie tiger. Zombie white tiger, to be exact. I’m not making up this zombie stuff, but you might be happy Snyder did. Do we wish we could spend more time in zombie society learning about the zombie way of life and its probable zombie Lord of the Flies origin story than with the assemblage of amusing, but thinly rendered not-yet-dead characters and all their basic-bitch human concerns? Yep. Who are the zombies NOW, I ask? WHO?

Anyway, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead was perfectly enjoyable pointless violence with its share of tense moments. Army of the Dead has less tense moments but it’s a generally more creative bit of enjoyable pointless violence. There’s a point when Snyder’s use of slo-mo becomes a parody of a parody of itself, when characters die in slo-mo with slo-mo $100 bills fluttering poetically through the air like angels calling them up to heaven. This scene illustrates how the film is obviously a treatise on greed: No great reward comes without great risk, and these people took a huge Vegas gamble. Of course, they could still be alive if they’d just been OK with driving a Kia and shopping at Target. Who says movies these days don’t have morals?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Army of the Dead is basically a Michael Bay movie, but with the scads of upsetting tonal grossness replaced by scads of way-awesome visual grossness. It’s bloated and silly and puerile and absurdly grisly, but nevertheless resembles that elusive thing known as Actual Fun.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Army of the Dead on Netflix