Hot on the heels of HBO Max releasing the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League comes another movie from the divisive filmmaker, Army of the Dead, this time on another streaming platform. Snyder announced plans for his own zombie flick way back in 2007, then languished in development hell at Warner Bros. until Netflix bought the rights in 2019. In a way, this is a return to roots of sorts for the director. In his feature film debut, he helmed what is still considered to be one of his best works: the 2004 remake of George A. Romero’s beloved Dawn of the Dead. And just to be clear, Army of the Dead is not in any way related. So does Snyder’s zombie experience help at all? Well, kind of. The film definitely delivers on what it promises in its title with a premise that’s far more interesting than your average zombie action movie. But the Snyder-isms come into play so relentlessly that everything quickly turns into one generic predictable romp.

Army of the Dead quickly sets the stage with a clever opening scene: a pair of newlyweds celebrating their marriage are driving down the Nevada highway and collides with a military convoy. It’s then revealed that the top-secret cargo the military are transporting is a zombie, who then makes quick work of the soldiers, turning them into the undead before setting their sights upon Las Vegas. In typical Snyder fashion, the opening credits feature a cover version of “Viva Las Vegas” plays over a clever montage of Sin City turning into ground zero of the zombie apocalypse. Swarms of undead showgirls and pageant queens wreak carnage in casinos; Elvis impersonators feast on people and tourists alike; the military try to save as much survivors as they can before cordoning off the whole city into a quarantine zone (all in slow motion of course). We are also introduced to the major players of the film, mercenaries who’ve lost loved ones and helped people escape the doomed city: Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick). It’s pretty entertaining stuff really, and the perfect place where Snyder’s stylistic sensibilities can definitely be appreciated.

Once the film has settled on the currect situation, the next hour introduces us to the rest of the cast and the movie’s main plot. Scott Ward, now working a dead-end job at a diner, is visited by billionaire Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) offering to go on a heist back in zombie-fied Vegas and retrieve $200 million in a vault under his casino. The catch is, however, the government plans to nuke the city in a few days, so get in, get the money, get out and Ward’s team can keep $50 million from the stash. He reunites with Cruz and Vanderohe, and the three of them gather their own ragtag team of zombie killers Ocean’s 11-style, including the safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), the wisecracking badass helicopter pilot Peters (Tig Notaro), a zombie-killing vlogger named Guzman (Raúl Castillo), and more. Joining in at the last minute are Tanaka’s right-hand man Martin (Garret Dillahunt), Ward’s estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), and the scene-stealing Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), a coyote with experience transporting people in and out of Vegas.

The film shows a lot of potential in the initial scenes of the team entering Vegas, with screenwriters Snyder, Shay Hatten, and Joby Harold attempting their own interesting spins. As it stands, we learn that zombies have developed a heirarchy: the shamblers make up the mindless zombies as we know them, serving as cannon-fodder for the alphas who are faster, stronger, and more intelligent. The scene where Lilly showcases her knowledge in the zombie status quo, and subsequently gives a human offering to the alphas is incredibly riveting in particular. It shows promise of something new and fresh in a tired genre.

When the zombie killing starts, however, is where Army of the Dead falls into cliches and becomes a completely less interesting bloat of spectacle. It doesn’t help that the movie is two and half hours long and profoundly devoid of any personality even for a zombie action flick in which character development is rarely important. It could’ve help if there was more to the actual heist itself than just getting from point A to point B with a bunch of zombies in between. Instead, the film forces drama involving Ward and Kate (and Ward and Cruz later on for some reason) that just comes off as incredibly annoying, and shows the characters lacking any sense of urgency in a city that’s infested with the undead about to be nuked to annihilation in hours.

The worst thing about Army of the Dead that there are a lot of set-ups and foreshadowing that would’ve helped elevate the suspense but ultimately forgotten. Lilly mentions dead shamblers coming back to “life” if it rains as the teams enters Vegas. The weather is perfectly dry the whole time. The buzzsaw that Vanderohe loves to kill zombies with? Never used again. There’s even this whole monologue about parallel timelines, being stuck in simulations and infinite loops that absolutely do not lead into anything at all, aside from a meaningless easter egg. The plot twists late in the film come as no surprise because at this point, we’re already expecting them to happen as we’ve seen them in better zombie movies. Army of the Dead doesn’t really add anything new to the genre when it cannibalizes story beats from superior movies like Aliens.

For what it’s worth, Army of the Dead is unpretentiously fun in its action set pieces and delivers what it ambitiously set out to do – an army of the (un)dead. And that’s what does work in this movie. I’ve stated before that captivating visuals are Snyder’s strongest suit (shout outs to the zombie tiger), and it does not get any more obvious than here. It has that signature Snyder flair that his massive dedicated fanbase will certainly enjoy. But the thing about this film, and Zack Snyder in general, is that it’s just a bunch of action scenes happening, with its plot merely serving as a skeleton for them to hang on. There’s enough of them to hold things together for a turn-off-your-brain-off (pun intended) afternoon entertainment. Just don’t expect anything more than that.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆