Zack Snyder’s enthusiasm has always been his most distinctive characteristic as a filmmaker. He loves the worlds he creates, he loves the characters, and also the scenarios they wind up in. His enthusiasm is explicit; not just from the way he talks about his films but the ways he makes them. But that enthusiasm is both his boon as well as his crutch, and his latest film, the beginning of what could be a future partnership with Netflix after the fracas with Warner Brothers studios over “Justice League,” bears this out.
In many ways, “Army of the Dead” feels like a natural progression of Snyder’s career after recent years. Beyond a welcome focus on something distinctly NOT superheroic, it finds him back where his career began. In 2004, in a very different time in film culture and production, Snyder’s remake of George A Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” put him on the map as an exciting new filmmaker. The return to the genre in 2021 feels like a natural reset for Snyder’s career, but it also feels like an extension of all the familiar qualities that define his work. The opening fifteen minutes set this up impressively.
A pair of soldiers are transporting a payload from Area 51 when they collide with a pair of newlyweds. The soldiers are talking about urban legends. The couple is caught in the throes of wedded bless. The set-up immediately seeming primed for irreverence before the collision and before the revelation that the payload, unbeknownst to the pair and the rest of their team following, is carrying a superhuman zombie. Naturally, the soldiers that survive are infected and they follow their superhuman leader to Las Vegas. Party.
As the soundtrack croons “Viva Las Vegas,” we watch as the zombies overtake the city, battle with the soldiers and are eventually cordoned off by regular people turned zombie experts – some of these civilians are important – Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward, Omari Hardwick’s Vanderohe and Ana de la Reguera’s Maria, in particular. They do not defeat the zombies, but do enough to wall them off, leaving the extended area as a quarantine base and leaving the victorious civilians with nothing beyond a tap on the back. Months later, those civilians are struggling to make ends meet. All of this takes about 15 minutes to establish. This is instructive, for a number of reasons.
Significantly, “Army of the Dead,” written by Snyder, Shay Hatten and Joby Harold, is so entertained by itself it feels reluctant to focus on its own centre. The real story begins at the thirty-minute mark, when a team of mercenaries, including some of the civilians we’ve spied before and others new players, meet in front of casino owner Bly Tanaka, who needs a team to venture into the cordoned off area to retrieve 200 million dollars. “Army of the Dead” is a zombie-flick by way of heist-flick that will see the team led by Scott, along with Vanderohe, Maria and some others. In some ways, the opening is a typical Snyderesque sleight of hand. Misdirection as praxis is central to his ethos as a filmmaker, but in “Army of the Dead” it immediately calls attention to the ways that that misdirection ends up compromising its focus.
Any heist film with a sprawling ensemble gets by on a number of moving parts. The central one is Scott’s relationship with his estranged daughter, Kate, who works with WHO at a quarantine camp in the area. That relationship is the emotional backbone that the film’s climax depends on, but Snyder is not content to merely set this up amidst the heist. Instead, the film devotes a significant portion of its opening to setting up Kate’s role at the camp, establishing the sexist dynamic of a prison guard as a sexual abuser in scenes reminiscent of real world refugee camps that feel so serious and exhausting it feels at odds with the capricious silliness in other scenes. It’s the other part of Snyder’s ethos—excess as praxis. “Army of the Dead” is already manning the zombie and heist tropes that inform its centre and it begins to buckle when those genres must run through notes of emotion that clash. In short form, like the extended opening scene, the mismatch of tones is intriguing but the more the film shifts into additional clashes of focus and tone the more whole of its existence feels nebulous. People often say that Snyder’s work is reminiscent of style over substance but it’s a criticism that seems out of place. Snyder is fascinated by so many types and so many substances that at a point it feels like too much to rein in and we begin to wonder which will reign.
In Snyder’s defence, he cares enough about this sprawling cast that he works to give each minor member a time of value. The first team member to fall prey to the zombies is given an extensive scene of infection that feels like it belongs to someone more major. As the movie goes on, we realise that that extension of moments informs the film’s own extensiveness of focus. It sucks out the tension. We already know what happens with these genres. The prize at the end is compromised. Most zombie films will see members of the central teams being infected and perishing. It feels counterintuitive to further complicate that journey by moments that seem to mark time.
With too much to consider, we are left to pick and choose what to cling to. Instinctually, this should be the central father daughter relationship but I find myself unable to invest. Bautista gives a good turn but he still feels belaboured by the burden of emotion and the chemistry with Kate that needs to sell it falters.
So we turn to our band of misfits. Hardwick and Matthias Schweighöfer (as the gun-shy safecracker) emerge as best just for the irredentist insouciance in their mismatched pairing, which also leads to three of my favourite payoffs in the narrative. Raul Castillo pops up as social media influence with sharpshooting skills to remind us that he needs his own starring vehicle. Elsewhere Tig Natoro and Nora Arnezede give good effort to stock roles. There are a few set pieces that thrill. Using a zombie as bait to test some security. Or a tiger-figure that has been enhanced by the Zombie population. But it feels like too much and too little, all at once. Enthusiasm cannot always give way to insight or even impact. And for long stretches in the middle this “Army of the Dead” disconnectedly ambles towards its end until the very last two sequences. It doesn’t help that it’s shot in a way that deemphasises it’s setting, Snyder acts as his own DP but beyond incidental moments the potential vitality of a zombie film set in the colourful splendour of Las Vegas feels secondary to the brown dunness of the photography.
I’ll give it this, “Army of the Dead” saves two good sequences for the very end of the film so that it leaves you with a sense of propulsion that’s a bit invigorating. I’m not certain how much that offsets the muddle that comes before, though. There are so many moving parts here that’s something bound to stick, and it’s always been my favourite thing about Zack Snyder as a filmmaker. There is always something in his work that you can attach to when his desire to give you MORE MORE MORE continues unabated. “Army of the Dead”, is, in that way, a return to form for Snyder. I’m not sure it’s very good, though.
Army of the Dead is streaming on Netflix.
