Viva

This movie is not what I thought it would be. (Unmarked Spoilers)

Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) must assemble a team to perform a daring casino heist. First, they must sneak into a quarantine Las Vegas, avoiding the numerous undead, switch on the casino generators, break into the uncrackable vault, make their way to the casino roof with the abandoned helicopter, and fly away before the whole city gets nuked. Yes, that is their entire plan, and only one person points out how utterly crazy the whole thing is.

Army of the Dead is brought to us by Zack Snyder, who, as I mentioned previously, I am not a fan of. Especially his 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. The first couple of minutes are great, but ultimately it pales in comparison to the 1978 original. I’m not a fan of Bautista either, even if he is perfect as Drax the Destroyer. So, now that we’ve established that I am the last person who should be watching this movie, let’s move on to whether or not I actually liked it. 

Well, honestly, Army of the Dead isn’t a good movie, but it isn’t a bad movie either. A bad movie would have left me feeling something. Instead of rage or disappointment, the only thing I think is “whatever.” That might be the worst thing I can say about this movie. I walked in fully prepared to hate it, but doing so would take too much effort.

The feeling I get from watching this is that it’s supposed to be a stupid, fun action movie. How exactly does Zeus (Richard Cetrone), patient zero and king of the Alpha zombies, escape Area 51? A newlywed couple decides to have sex while driving and crash into the military convoy transporting him wherever. Then the next ten minutes is zombie mayhem set to “Viva Las Vegas.” In that regard, they should have made this movie even more bonkers because, as it is, it’s not very amusing, mainly because the comic relief characters are terrible.

Scott and the others can get into Las Vegas because of his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell). Kate works as a volunteer in the refugee camp for zombie survivors. There, she’s able to hook them up with Lilly “The Coyote” (Nora Arnezeder), who sneaks people into the city for various reasons. Except when Kate learns that the Coyote has smuggled in a friend of hers who hasn’t come back, Kate insists on coming with them to perform a rescue.

This is the one part of the movie that does infuriate me because it’s so f*****g stupid. When crafting a “strong female character,” there’s a difference between being assertive and being a stubborn dumba*s. Kate coming along would have been more justified if the movie gave the audience any indication that she’s had some form of military training. Why couldn’t Kate have been a member of the heist crew who wants the money for her volunteer work? The father-daughter mend fences subplot would still be sappy, but it wouldn’t be as maddening.

The characters in this movie are not well written. They’re all cardboard cutouts, with special mention going to Martin (Garret Dillahunt), the Paul Reiser (NSFW) of the group. He is so evil that he’s a d**k when it’s not pragmatic. For example, while moving through a room of hibernating zombies, Martin separates Chambers (Samantha Win) from the others when she accuses him of not having the team’s backs. Even though if the zombies wake up and eat her, that puts everyone in danger. Then he locks the others behind a closed grate so that he can escape on his own. Clearly, he’s never heard the phrase ‘I don’t need to outrun the zombie, I just need to outrun you.’ 

The stupidest thing that Martin, and by extension his employer Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), do is not tell the team the real mission is to create a zombie bioweapon. Then instead of collecting a blood sample from any Alpha zombie, Martin collects the head of the Alpha Queen (Athena Perample), Zeus’ mate. Yes, Zeus has a mate, and guess what, she was pregnant. Though it’s entirely possible Martin wasn’t aware of any of that.

Naturally, the death of his queen and child is used to make the conflict between Zeus and the humans personal. Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera) also gets killed shortly after confessing that she’s always loved Scott, despite the two of them having no chemistry and barely interacting beyond the movie’s start. Again, this is done to motivate a male character. While we’re on the topic of sexism, the only survivor being the feminine Kate while the more butch female characters all die doesn’t provide the best optics. 

What’s unfortunate is that the Alpha Queen is only around for about five minutes before being dying. Again. You know what I mean. I would have loved to have seen more of her and her relationship with Zeus. Actually, I would have loved to have seen more of all the Alpha zombies. Such as how they live their day-to-day lives and the exact nature of their hierarchy. That would have been cool.

Bautista has previously hyped up the ending of the film. Saying that he didn’t want people going in with high expectations, but they should. There was something about the film’s ending that he was obsessed with, making him watch the movie five times already. I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s either the usual sequel setup or the scene where Scott gets put down by Kate due to being bitten, both of which left me going ‘I don’t care.’ My standards for a great monster movie ending are currently set at Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Mist. 

All in all, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was much better. It had more than the bare bones of plot and characters. Additionally, there are two prequels to this film set to come out. They are Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, an anime series about the early days of the outbreak, and Army of Thieves, a movie about safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer). Snyder has also made it clear that he would love to do a sequel to this so-so movie. And just to remind you, the last time that happened, the result was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.