Review of Army of the Dead (2021) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 22 May 2021

Seeing a hierarchical kingdom of zombies is actually kinda refreshing. We have the Shamblers, who are derived from the typical zombies of the late 60s and the 70s, only slightly more evolved and a tad smarter.

We've also got the Alphas, who are far more superior to the Shamblers: extremely agile, relatively fast and even capable of showing emotions. Their leader, Zeus, and the one who likely has turned them all into zombies, is quite intelligent and strong.

Pretty much a human hadn't been for his gruesome look and his growling and screeching. He's even got himself a queen. The problem is, there's no proper explanation why they retain such human traits, with the Alphas acting and displaying emotions and feelings like humans to the point they come across as zombie imitators.

Even worse, that left the hierarchical structure unexplored and unsatisfyingly vague and muddled. That said, I wouldn't hesitate looking past these inadequacies resulted from such half-baked world building so long as they would be offset by the galore of bloody fun expected from an action-packed zombie flick.

Sadly, I can't say the movie fully delivered on that either, as the entertainment value is heavily undercut by a plethora of issues including clunky dialogue, one-note characters that are either mere stereotypes or unabashedly ripped off of other action movie characters — most notably from Aliens — tonal inconsistency, overly-dramatic moments and, worst of all, a total failure in embracing all of these shortcomings openly in an act of self-awareness of sorts.

For starters, the attempts at comedy are awfully bad, with all the jokes falling flat and some of them are just plain cringe-worthy. Ludwig Dieter, the German safecracker who's supposed to be the comic relief character, is unbearably annoying and dumb.

The same can be said about some frequent, albeit unsubstantial and tentative, tongue-in-cheek allusions to politics. Needless to say, all the concerns mentioned above have come to the surface and become impossible to ignore.

The emotional scenes Scott (David Bautista) share with his daughter Kate are both repetitive and devoid of the slightest dramatic impact, mainly because the plotline revolves around their tumultuous relationship is woefully underdeveloped.

Although the movie had its fair amount of time to provide necessary background for its main characters, the bulk of the first act is diminished by poor editing, sluggish tone and unfocused narrative. As an actioner, Army of the Dead is, in fact, quite generic and derivative despite its desperate attempts to conceal that with its skin-deep contrivance, buckets of blood and gore and no skimping on slow-motion moments you'd expect from Zack Snyder.

No action scene is memorable or even intriguing enough. Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, the movie also feels strangely limited in scope, which is not only unusual from Zack Snyder but also at odds with the epic it lends itself to be.

That, along with having a kind of a pattern when it comes to switching between humour, action and drama, stifled the tension the perilous zombie territory could've yielded in spades. The fact I dozed off midway through is enough to prove how tedious the end result turned out to be.

Even the songs in its endless soundtrack playing rather abruptly didn't help galvanizing the ponderous second act. Honestly, however, the movie picks up in its third act, which is basically one elongated action sequence with the climactic scene being genuinely gripping.

Dave Bautista's performance is one of the few redeeming factors here, with some schmaltzy emotional scenes he single-handedly rendered them watchable. Still, Army of the Dead is a predictable, ridiculously overlong zombie heist movie that tried so hard to be an epic, brainless gorefest but ended up being nothing but a borefest.