Review: ARMY OF THE DEAD (2021)

 ARMY OF THE DEAD (2021) USA 2hrs 28m

Dir: Zack Snyder

When a team of army soldiers lose an experimental undead test subject in the desert surrounding Las Vegas, all hell breaks out as a zombie apocalypse takes over the city. A group of survivors are barricaded on the outskirts of the city. Fast food chef Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) is approached by a wealthy gang leader to get a team together and head into zombie infested Vegas to crack a safe and bring back the billions before the city is nuked.

This movie is everywhere right now... wherever you look on any horror group on social media people are talking about it. By the looks of things it has divided alot of people and the ones that hate this movie REALLY hate this movie! I have read many reviews and comments about ARMY OF THE DEAD so I thought it was about sodding time I added my own thoughts to the mix. So, here goes...

First off, I don't care what the haters are saying I actually quite liked it. I wasn't expecting much from it to be fair, I certainly wasn't expecting a follow up to Snyders 2004 version of DAWN OF THE DEAD but it would seem that some people were. I was worried that with a run time of 2hrs 28mins it would be 2hrs of padding and 28mins of zombies but luckily that was not the case and it had a ton of zombie action throughout. That doesn't mean to say it didn't need cutting down, it really did, there were lengthy moments of unnecessary dialogue and subplots we could have done without. You could tell that a lot of the effects and stunts were CGI and they used green screen as if it were scenery. In fact Tig Notaro's character, Marianne Peters, the sarcastic, cigar smoking helicopter pilot shot all of her scenes on green screen 8 months after production for the movie had wrapped up. Her character was originally played by Chris D'Elia who was cut out of proceedings due to sexual misconduct allegations. I did not know this at the time of watching the movie and thought they did a good job removing him and adding in Notaro. The zombie tiger, Valentine (belonged to Sigfried and Roy as part of their stage show... now a walking corpse with pointy teeth) played a big part in some of their advertising campaigns for the movie and, obviously created by CGI, was really well done. It even had way more screen time then I expected. Unfortunately, the fight scene between Valentine and Garret Dillahunt's character, Martin, albeit really gruesome was also annoyingly quite glitchy. The zombies themselves were really awesome! I loved their yellow eyes and the mass swarmings during the opening titles. They were, of course, the fast types all muscular, ripped and into their parkour but I have to admit to finding that rather exciting. I do love a shambler and biter but I find myself drawn to the ripped and raging type more and more these days. That is where I draw the line though. As a member of the undead myself I take offence to anyone that questions our intelligence. Suggestions of an evolved type that is cleverer than us as a collective and is in control of us is something that just will not ever happen. There are no Alphas, no Kings, no Queens and definitely no fetuses!! Zombies cannot reproduce in the conventional way, we are dead, our hearts do not beat, blood does not pump to any of our organs, that is not how we are made!! The infection, virus, whatever it may be is passed through saliva, blood or scratches...end of story. The only way to make a zombie baby is to infect one in the aforementioned way or, and Snyder did this himself in DAWN, have an infected pregnant female die during labour and produce a zombie baby there are no other plausible ways of this happening.

Character wise I do have to agree with the majority here... there are way more throw away and generally unlikeable characters in this then there are likeable ones I'm afraid and some of them are really quite infuriating. Garret Dillahunt who plays Martin the bad guy sent by the gang leader to see the team get to the safe is not as boring as he is in FEAR THE WALKING DEAD but no less awkward. I think Dave Bautista did an okay job but I really loved the sarcasm Notaro brought to mix however, the best character for me was the German safe breaker Dieter (Matthias Schweighofer)! I loved him, he made the movie for me especially his screaming. The others are a mixture of arrogant, stupid and obnoxious at varying degrees. One of the characters they go running off looking for gets found but then disappears. If anyone knows what actually happened to Geeta could they please let me know? Thanks.

I guess ARMY didn't really do itself any favours with some of its advertising either. One stunt they pulled at Wrestlemania completely backfired on them causing ridicule and embarrasment when I'm sure they thought it would be really cool at the time. They have also been accused of ripping off AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON in it's opening sequence and containing various references to ALIEN. The storyline has so many subplots that it is hard to keep up with and they tease you with little snippets of things that never come of anything. There is a hint of time travel or other dimensional goings on when the team find some skeletal bodies at the safe, they dont mention it at the time but the corpses are dressed the same as Bautista's team. When trying to escape the casino they are attacked by huge swarms of zombies and some of them when hit appear to be robotic which again is never mentioned. I'm kind of worried that a sequel might be on the way to explain these anomalies and I'm really not sure we need another chapter of this! If that wasn't enough now some people are complaining about dead pixels in several scenes being off putting and a stupid oversight on Synders part. I just think people need to chill the fuck out about it now. I totally agree that ARMY brings nothing new to the genre at all. Ok, so it makes a nod to AMERICAN WEREWOLF big deal, I liked it. I get that alot of people don't like running zombies, then don't bother watching it. The zombie tiger was done in 2011's ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE and the zombie horse was done better in GAME OF THRONES but again I dont care I still thought they were cool. The thing I found most annoying about it were the absolutely butchered cover versions they decided to feature. The Richard Cheese version of Viva Las Vegas over the opening title sequence felt like it went on for half an hour and when the female vocals came in I wanted to stick skewers in my ears! The cover of Bad Moon Rising was just awful, if you're not going to use the original then Lagwagons cover of it is the only way to go. The rest I didn't mind so much, the Culture Club track in the elevator was funny and the acoustic version of Zombie by The Cranberries was bearable.

On the whole, for me, this is not the hateful movie many people are labelling it. It's entertaining, bold, loud and full of action, yes it has some flaws but there are worse movies out there. In fact I want to watch it again and I will be buying it when it gets a bells and whistles shiny disc release. It doesn't deserve top spot in the cemetery but a plot has been marked out for it, I score this; 3 brains out of 5. 

Now that we have got that out of the way, all the haters will hopefully soon calm down and we can all move on with our lives!