After nearly two decades, director Zack Snyder has returned to the zombie movie genre with Army of the Dead. This filmmaker made his feature-length directorial debut with the 2004 project Dawn of the Dead but has spent the years since making big-budget blockbusters and superhero movies. But now, the prodigal son returns, and this time he's bringing his experience with his costly productions to make a zombie heist movie. That tantalizing premise doesn't get executed as well as it could, unfortunately, mostly due to shortcomings that have been found in other Snyder movies and Netflix blockbusters. But it does have its charms, especially when it comes to its undead foes.
Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) is working at a burger joint when he's approached by Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) about leading a dangerous mission for him. You see, Ward previously was part of a special-ops team that got the U.S. Secretary of Defense out of zombie-infested Las Vegas, though this mission cost the life of Ward's wife. Now, Ward's got the experience Tanaka needs to retrieve $96 million from a vault in Vegas, which is scheduled to be blown up by a nuclear warhead in just a few hour's time. Strapped for cash, Ward proceeds to assemble a group of individuals, including safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and close friend Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), to pull off a seemingly impossible heist with one hell of a ticking clock.
Netflix movies famously don't get as many notes as films from traditional studios. This can be a good thing if you're Martin Scorsese or Tamara Jenkins, filmmakers who're making thoughtful dramas with a singular vision that could be compromised if they get constant studio notes. However, many of the streamer's movies meant to appeal to mass audiences have suffered because of this hands-off approach. There's nobody around to tell movies like Project Power or Bright that your pacing is off or that a plot point doesn't make sense. It's one thing to be shaggy or messy when you're reaching for lofty themes. It's another to be a movie designed solely designed to deliver shoot-em-ups that clearly needed more oversight.
Army of the Dead isn't the worst example of this trend but it is a pretty bad offender nonetheless, particularly when it comes to pacing. A dialogue-free opening credits sequence only reinforced this problem by being such a zippy efficient piece of storytelling. Like he did on Watchmen, Snyder compresses so much personality, history, and characterization into a short span of time, all without the aid of spoken words from the character. Distinctive imagery abounds and there isn't an ounce of fat on the sequence. Even the lettering for the opening credits, all bright pink and arranged in a wonky manner on the screen, suggests admirable creativity.
Once the lead characters return to the zombie-infested Vegas, though, all the enjoyable pacing goes out of the window. Screenwriters Snyder, Shay Hatten, and Joby Harold are way too in love with characters explaining the mechanics of how this zombie world operates. Snyder's a strong visualist, as shown by his gift for dialogue-free sequences as well his acclaimed work in commercials. He could communicate all this info nicely without beating us over the head with it. Unfortunately, Army of the Dead drags down its pacing with lots of exposition and digressions that'll please the writers of this movie's Wiki but few others.
The second act is really where the film as a whole suffers as things grind to a halt so Dieter can try and crack open a safe, Scott's estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) goes off on a side-mission and the other characters trade dialogue lending insight into their respective pasts. It's all just setting up chess pieces for later parts of the movie told through flat direction and unmemorable performances. Trim down this section almost entirely and Army of the Dead would flow a lot better, especially since most of the backstory elements revealed here don't play into the movie at all. They also don't get us closer to the characters themselves, who all largely remain generic cannon fodder save for Tig Nataro being a blast as a detached pilot.
Character-based stuff is not where this movie's strengths lie. Those strengths are instead found in creative reinterpretations of zombies, with Army of the Dead's approach to the undead being that these Vegas brain-eaters are divided into two classes. There are the traditional slow-moving zombies but there are also smarter, faster, and deadlier zombies called Alphas. Snyder finds subtle and neat visual elements, like the Alpha leader wearing a metal helmet, to reflect their intellect. When it comes time for humans to face off against these Alpha's and other zombies, Snyder shows off the kind of memorable visuals that have made him a distinctive filmmaker for nearly two decades now. Unfortunately, his return to the zombie movie genre is less than the sum of its parts. Despite a criminally long runtime, there's just not much to chew on with Army of the Dead.
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