Army of the Dead (2021) Review

 "Scott, was that a zombie in a goddamn cape?"

-Marianne Peters

After a zombie outbreak, Las Vegas is quarantined away from the rest of the world and becomes a city of the dead.  Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), the owner of a casino, has 200 million dollars locked in his vault and hires a team of mercenaries, led by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), to retrieve it.  Things become more complicated when Scott's daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell) tags along and they discover more than just your average zombies inside the city.

Spoilers below for Army of the Dead.  This movie is ok at best.  Don't go see it in theaters, but if it peaks your interest, watch it on Netflix.

What Works:

The best part of this movie is, hands-down, the gore.  We get some absolutely gnarly kills of both zombies and humans alike.  The best part is, a lot of them are shocking, so you don't even see it coming until the blood seems the splatter across the screen.

Dave Bautista is solid as the main protagonists.  I was expecting him to be a comedic hero, like his portrayal of Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.  That really isn't the case.  He doesn't have many funny moments.  He is the emotional core of the movie.  He gets a few scenes where he gets to act in hurt and despair and he does a good job.

Matthias Schweighöfer plays the best character of the movie, Ludwig Dieter, the safecracker.  Dieter is the comic relief character, and from the trailer, I was ready to bet everything that he would be extremely obnoxious.  I was wrong.  Schweighöfer does a great job and is both funny and charming.  He was one of the only characters I was actually invested in seeing live.  

Finally, I really enjoyed the unique zombies they had running around Las Vegas.  I'm not used to seeing zombies on horseback or zombie-tigers.  Having an actually intelligent army of the dead was something I was not expecting, but it was certainly unique and gave us a few fun moments.

What Sucks:

This movie is almost two and a half hours long and it simply doesn't need to be.  There are plenty of scenes and lines that could have been cut.  This film drags at times, that's for sure.

The biggest problem I had is the cinematography.  Zack Snyder not only directed this movie, but acted as his own cinematographer.  He should never do that again.  He really likes to have one object or person in focus at a time and make everything else a blurry mess.  It's both distracting and ugly.

Most of the characters are really underdeveloped and not only that, they are really stupid.  You can make me care about characters by making me emotionally invested in them or by making them competent.  There are so many terrible decisions and most of them aren't developed enough for me to care.

Finally, this movie has problems with its tone.  I supposed I shouldn't be that shocked when a Zack Snyder movie is dark and depressing, but this film was marketed as a fun thrill ride.  It really isn't that.  Almost everyone dies and by the end of it, it all feels like a waste.  Nothing much was accomplished and the character we spent a huge chunk of the movie trying to rescue dies without any acknowledgement.  If Geeta (Huma Qureshi) had survived, it might have felt somewhat worth it.

Verdict:

Army of the Dead has solid performances from Dave Bautista and Matthias Schweighöfer, a very unique batch of zombies, and some amazing gore.  However, the tone and cinematography are a mess, the characters are stupid and underdeveloped, and the runtime is too long.  It's a decent enough watch, but don't spend any money on it.

 6/10: Okay