Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking The basic premise certainly has appeal – a heist flick inside a zombie-infested setting – but the more Snyder veers away from the interest of this backdrop, the more the plot of Army of the Dead shambles. It’s not a complete waste of time. When Snyder sticks to this premise, interest runs high, and the action set pieces are certainly as entertaining as they are memorable. But those highs often take a backseat role to a story that feels like it’s sliced another half of a movie in it, trying to build some sort of Zack Zombies Universe that easily could have happened without the attempts to overexplain everything. If you’re after more Snyder, Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Watchmen are available on Binge and 300 is currently streaming on Netflix. Sure, they really should have taken the Marvel path and made dedicated movies to Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg before throwing them all together, but Zack Snyder’s Justice Leaguewas an appropriate and thematically linked swan song to the universe building that Snyder started with Man of Steel. Fast-forward to more recent times, and Snyder has returned to his roots with a zombie flick which, on paper, is all kinds of exciting given the excellent work he did with his Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004. That and 28 Days Later is when I got how terrifying zombies could be. With a title like Army of the Dead, the expectation is that Snyder will build on what he established 17 years ago. But the reality is an inconsistent mix of a genuinely exciting idea spliced with universe expansion that feels, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, completely out of place. In its simplest form, Army of the Dead is a heist movie inside a zombie-infested Las Vegas. Initially, I thought it strange that money could motivate in a zombie-infested world, but Army of the Dead is quick to answer that question and a lot more you didn’t think you needed to ask. It’s a bit dumb in parts and occasionally asks the audience to not think too far into things, even if it does set up some things it doesn’t properly pay off. The bloat starts off early, even if the initial tone is exactly what you’d hope for – tongue-in-cheek, witty banter and plenty of gore – but that’s only in the first prologue. Wait. First prologue? Yeah, there’s a second prologue, which is mercifully relegated to the opening credits, but that’s where style starts stepping on the toes of substance. It’d be fine if it this over-the-top halfway point between Dawn of the Dead and Zombieland was consistent throughout but, much like the tone, there’s a tendency to overexplain background details then gloss over elements that are more essential to the core plot. Poor Dave Bautista is stuck playing the straight man, despite having shown he can blend the dramatic with the comedic in Guardians of the Galaxy. But he’s the leading man, which means the overall tone more serious than fun, despite the underlying absurdity of robbing a bank amid the undead. Still, there’s a couple of effective horror set pieces that are more memorable than when the bullets and brains start flying (even some of those sections rock), but the action sequences are sparse by zombie-movie standards. Hell, the only time you’ll see the titular army of the dead is during the opening credits, with the rest of the deadhead time relegated to smaller bands of brain-munchers. It’s admirable to see Snyder try to advance zombie mythology in Army of the Dead, but these scenes are all over the place in quality, sometimes creating intrigue and other times being outright farcical. One particular scene that I won’t ruin garnered laughs from the screening audience even though it was clearly played for drama, tension and an attempt at humanising the zombies. Not long after there’s an intended emotional moment between human characters that garnered similar ‘where the hell did that come from?’ laughs. Ultimately, this zombie mythos building is less what I Am Legend (the novel) did for vampires and more another unnecessary subplot in a movie that stumbles whenever it steps away from the basic heist-plus-zombies formula. There’s a great movie buried at the heart of the multiple unnecessary subplots and bloated universe expansion. It just needs a deft editor to cut this Snyder’s cut to keep it laser focused on the heist at hand.
