Film Review: Army of the Dead
0
0
Read Time:2 Minute, 2 Second
Army of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s return to the land of the undead (if you don’t count reanimated Superman in Justice League), sees the director telling a story of heroism, greed, and family. Dave Bautista plays Scott Ward, a mercenary who is visited by a casino owner who comes to him with a mission: recover $200 million in his safe before a nuclear strike wipes out Las Vegas. Ward puts together a team to retrieve the money, only to face complications when his estranged daughter insists on coming along to rescue a friend and an alternative mission threatens the lives of everyone in the group.
Army of the Dead, if nothing else, is a movie brimming with ideas and slight twists on the genre. Once again the zombies move fast, but this time with purpose and with an unusual intelligence, the origin of which is probably best discovered in the film. However, the movie does not have enough interesting things going for it to uphold this run time. The movie is 2.5 hours, ostensibly so that Snyder can mimic the real time dilemma of the characters in the story. While the film is in the great tradition of older horror films in allowing us to know the characters before the mess happens, are any of these characters worth that time? Outside of the father-daughter material, all of the interpersonal connections and revelations fall flat, though the actors truly do try and serve the film as best they can.
These moments feel flat because the visual of the language of this movie is so flat. Zack Snyder, in his first outing as both DP and director on a feature, does not quite inspire confidence as nearly every shot in this movie is a medium or close up shot with a foreground subject in focus and the background out of focus. The most interesting sequence in this film comes where the heroes have to make their way through the hibernating zombies and the best use of the visual effects is how seamlessly Tig Notaro was edited into the film. It’s sad cause there’s some phenomanal makeup and production design work in Army of the Dead, but it all feels rendered basic dude to the shot selection and camera movement.
Ultimately, Army of the Dead is a movie that aims to do much but it does not reach the highs of other notable Snyder projects.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %