Army of the Dead

Way back in 2004, long before any­one had ever uttered the words ​‘Sny­der Cut’, a vir­tu­al­ly unknown film­mak­er impressed audi­ences with his zip­py remake of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead – no small feat, giv­en how high­ly regard­ed the orig­i­nal is. Zack Snyder’s film (writ­ten by James Gunn) satirised the genre, turned the dial way up on gore, and seemed to mark the arrival of a major new direct­ing talent.

Romero him­self was a lit­tle more crit­i­cal: ​“It was bet­ter than I expect­ed. I thought it was a good action film. The first 15, 20 min­utes were ter­rif­ic, but it sort of lost its rea­son for being. It was more of a video game. I’m not ter­ri­fied of things run­ning at me; it’s like Space Invaders. There was noth­ing going on underneath.”

This descrip­tion could just as eas­i­ly apply to Snyder’s new zom­bie shoot ​’em up, Army of the Dead, in which a team of mer­ce­nar­ies led by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) attempt to rob a Las Vegas casi­no to the tune of $200 mil­lion. One small hitch: the city has been walled off, as it’s become over­run with the undead. See­ing the mon­ey as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help his estranged daugh­ter Kate (Ella Pur­nell), who works at a near­by refugee camp for dis­placed Vegas cit­i­zens, Ward assem­bles a crack team at the behest of bil­lion­aire casi­no own­er Bly Tana­ka (Hiroyu­ki Sanada).

There’s Van­dero­he (Omari Hard­wick), a for­mer philoso­pher turned sol­dier; Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), a friend of Ward’s; Lud­wig Dieter (Matthias Schweighofer), an eccen­tric Ger­man safe­crack­er; Mar­i­anne Peters (Tig Notaro), a pilot; Mikey Guz­man (Raul Castil­lo), a sharp-shoot­er with a YouTube chan­nel where he kills zom­bies; and Lily (Nora Arnezed­er), who has a rep­u­ta­tion for get­ting peo­ple in and out of the walled city. They’re joined by two vil­lains: Mar­tin (Gar­ret Dil­lahunt), Tanaka’s Head of Secu­ri­ty, and Burt Cum­mings (Theo Rossi), a sadis­tic guard from the refugee camp.

That’s a lot of char­ac­ters to keep track of, though Sny­der achieved a good bal­ance in Dawn of the Dead, which ran at 100 min­utes and man­aged to con­vince us to care about at least a few of the unfor­tu­nate mall­rats. Ward and his team trav­el into the ruins of Sin City where they learn of a spe­cial breed of ​‘Alpha’ zom­bie – led by one called Zeus who has a cape and rides a zom­bie horse – which are capa­ble of thought, organ­i­sa­tion, form­ing bonds and using tools.

This does cre­ate a sense of unease, as we’re still sup­posed to root for the human pro­tag­o­nists, even as they slice and dice their way through prim­i­tive hoards that are capa­ble of expe­ri­enc­ing emo­tion. It takes the shine off a premise that has been pitched as a zom­bie-heist romp, and Sny­der sim­ply doesn’t pos­sess the sto­ry­telling chops to explore the myr­i­ad impli­ca­tions of the plot beyond vague­ly ges­tur­ing towards them. (They’ve built a wall, you see, and they’re con­tain­ing inno­cent peo­ple in camps! And the zom­bies are actu­al­ly intelligent!)

Instead we’re left with a tedious, over­ly famil­iar father-daugh­ter sto­ry­line, and we don’t spend enough time with any oth­er char­ac­ter to real­ly care about them. The film could have done with more from Omari Hard­wick and Tig Notaro, undoubt­ed­ly the most charis­mat­ic mem­bers of the crew (a scene where Van­dero­he goes mano y mano with the Chief Zom­bie is a rare highlight).

At just shy of two-and-a-half hours in length, Army of the Dead sham­bles from one set-piece to the next, most­ly filmed with Snyder’s trade­mark grey-blue colour palette (he also serves as DoP) which seems at odds with Las Vegas’ rep­u­ta­tion as a gar­ish, neon-lit won­der­land in the mid­dle of the desert. There are only a cou­ple of scenes that take advan­tage of the city’s rep­u­ta­tion for grandeur and deca­dence, giv­ing the impres­sion that the film could have been set any­where with a few casi­nos; it’s only the pres­ence of a few Vegas land­marks that gives an indi­ca­tion of the setting.

This includes var­i­ous casi­nos, but also Valen­tine, a zom­bie tiger which the film does dis­ap­point­ing­ly lit­tle with. ​“She was one of Siegfried and Roy’s; she guards the begin­ning of their ter­ri­to­ry,” one char­ac­ter says with total con­vic­tion. Giv­en that Siegfried and Roy retired in 2009, are we to believe that the ​“zom­bie war” has been ongo­ing for over a decade, or that the film exists in some par­al­lel uni­verse where they nev­er stopped per­form­ing? If the city has been locked down for a decade, why have the zom­bies not died? To wit, why is Zack Sny­der so hung up on the idea of zom­bie fetuses?

It’s impres­sive that a film which runs at 158 min­utes can leave you with more ques­tions than answers, not only con­cern­ing the gen­e­sis of the hard­er, faster, bet­ter, stronger zom­bies but the back­sto­ries of our heroes them­selves, who are bare­ly giv­en a chance to estab­lish their his­to­ries or per­son­al­i­ties before being uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly offed, typ­i­cal­ly with­out much fan­fare. Read­ing the film’s press notes, this appears to have been inten­tion­al, as there is a spin-off ani­mé series and a pre­quel film in the works, which will pre­sum­ably fill in the nar­ra­tive gaps.

This rep­re­sents a wider prob­lem with mod­ern block­buster film­mak­ing – to ful­ly under­stand one film you have to watch a litany of adja­cent films and TV crossovers. Self-con­tained sto­ry­telling feels like it’s slip­ping away, and increas­ing­ly stu­dios demand that audi­ences invest in a mul­ti-nar­ra­tive arc from the off­set. Per­haps this is appeal­ing if you’re already a big fan of Sny­der, or the free­wheel­ing zom­bie antics of AMC’s The Walk­ing Dead, but if you just want to set­tle in for some humans-vs-zom­bies action, it’s a tall order.

It’s a shame that Army of Dead falls so flat, because the con­cept of a zom­bie heist movie is unde­ni­ably intrigu­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when we all need a lit­tle escapism. It’s not even that zom­bie films can’t be polit­i­cal (Romero’s fil­mog­ra­phy attests to that), but if you are aim­ing to make a state­ment then mere glanc­ing in the direc­tion of social injus­tice isn’t going to cut it. Snyder’s enthu­si­asm always comes across in inter­views, but it rarely trans­lates to the screen, and Army of the Dead ends up as a bloat­ed jum­ble of slo-mo vio­lence and mis­judged attempts at emo­tion­al res­o­nance. Space Invaders indeed.