Zack Snyder unleashes zombie chaos in the Army of… | Little White Lies

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Zack Sny­der unleash­es zom­bie chaos in the Army of the Dead trailer

13 Apr 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

A man and a woman engaged in a confrontational conversation, with the man appearing intimidating and the woman looking defensive. The image has a gritty, moody tone.
A man and a woman engaged in a confrontational conversation, with the man appearing intimidating and the woman looking defensive. The image has a gritty, moody tone.
Dave Batu­ista leads the crack squad of crim­i­nals boost­ing Las Vegas amidst waves of the undead.

Though recent months have made Zack Sny­der into some­thing like a Che Gue­vara-esque fig­ure for aggriev­ed nerds with a loose under­stand­ing of what an assem­bly cut is, the guy’s still a mav­er­ick genre film­mak­er at heart. His lat­est fea­ture sees him mov­ing away from the micro­man­aged fran­chise work on which he’s spent the last half-decade, and back to his ori­gins as the direc­tor of the Dawn of the Dead remake.

He returns to his zom­bie roots for Army of the Dead, an orig­i­nal-con­cept action pic­ture cross-pol­li­nat­ing its hor­ror sub­genre with the imme­di­ate plea­sures of the heist movie. Though that’s just a stuffi­er way of say­ing the phrase that sure­ly got this pitch sold in the meet­ing: casi­no rob­bery mid-zom­bie invasion.

Dave Bautista leads a crack squad includ­ing Tig Notaro (replac­ing Chris D’Elia in light of the sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions filed against the actor), Omari Hard­wick, Ella Pur­nell, and Ger­man import Matthias Schweighöfer on what might just be a sui­cide mis­sion with sky-high stakes.

Their bene­fac­tor (Hiroyu­ki Sana­da) sends them to Las Vegas to loot a mas­sive sub­ter­ranean vault beneath the Strip hous­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions, a mis­sion com­pli­cat­ed by the hordes upon hordes of flesh-starved ghouls saun­ter­ing around the perime­ter wall.

Of course they break in and swarm upon Bautista and Co., who must rely on their exten­sive skill with firearms and close com­bat if they want to sur­vive. The clips of our des­per­ate heroes leapfrog­ging across the tops of slot machines should be enough to sell skep­tics on the film as a sol­id cot­ton-can­dy diver­sion (with a side of viscera).

Most­ly, it’s a relief to see some­one who tru­ly knows what he’s doing chore­o­graph­ing large-scale action set-pieces, a tal­ent that goes under-appre­ci­at­ed in these days of pre-viz com­put­er­i­za­tion. Say what you will about Zack Sny­der, and there’s so much to say, but he’s out there keep­ing the flame of dumb-in-a-good-way 90s action B‑movies burning.

Army of the Dead comes to Net­flix on 21 May.

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