Zombie Slots - Army Of The Dead (2021)

Heist movies. Yep, we’ve been there. Sure, they were and can be fun to watch, but rarely something that I adore and want to watch again - 2001’s Ocean’s 11, I’m looking right at you. And your totally unnecessary sequels.

Add other elements though, and you might actually get my interest. Give me a narrative in the hands of one of my favourite directors, Zach Snyder and I’m probably going to love.

Add elements like zombies and headshots, and you can have my money.

Army Of The Dead doesn’t even need to take my money directly; it’s a Netflix original, so I’m as good as getting it for free (don’t ask my how my brain’s logic works, just go with it.) The film plays with multiple narratives and styles, presenting the heist-like romp with genuine heart and meaning, surrounded by significant amounts of gore and headshots as one would expect from a Snyder movie.

What I wasn’t expecting from a Snyder movie was for Army Of The Dead to open with a comedic oral sex beat, with a recently married couple engaging in some afternoon delight while the husband drives, ultimately crashing into, an army truck. It’s a scene that feels somewhat heavy-handed and forced when compared with Snyder’s usual delivery, but interesting nonetheless; our newly married couple feel like a hook-up who barely know each other (as may be fitting for taking place in Las Vegas wedding) while the conversation between our soon-to-die army characters suggests that they are moving something highly secretive from Area 51.

That secret is a living, breathing zombie, freed when the collision happens, slaughtering all and sundry before making its way to Las Vegas proper.

An opening credits scene works a bit too hard to establish how Vegas is affected by this zombie outbreak, with Vegas visitors, employees and families alike becoming either walking monsters or the misplaced inhabitants of a refugee camp following the city’s shut-down. The film gives us the stories of some of its characters involved in that affair, the honoured military of Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), and his team Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) and Maria Cruz (Ana De La Reguera.) Ward is approached by millionaire Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) who asks Ward to form a team capable of going in to Vegas and reclaiming significant amounts of cash from Tanaka’s hotel business, all in advance of the soon-to-happen nuclear attack on Vegas, killing off what’s left of the zombies.

That attack is scheduled for Independence Day, and it feels somewhat disappointing that Netflix couldn’t make a point and hold off on the release by a few weeks just to prove a point.

We’re treated to some videos of the trauma that’s been experienced by these characters, the film placing a special emphasis on Ward, a man who was forced to kill his own zombie-turning wife in front of their daughter Kate, played by Ella Purnell and now a social worker herself in the refugee camp. In an attempt to reconnect with Kate, Ward promises her all of his earnings from the heist, money that she can use to help or do some good, if she can help to get him and his team into Vegas.

Like most heist movies, there are more characters than necessary, , with the film’s heist specifically needing here’s-videos-of-me-killing-zombies vlogger Guzman (Raul Castillo), the pilot who will hopefully get them out of Vegas Peters (Tig Notaro) and all important locksmith Dieter (Matthias Schqeighöfer.) Several others are introduced, mostly in order to kill them off in gory death scenes following some heated interactions with the rest of the team.

As such, being a zombie-related heist movie, there is nothing significant or unexpected to Army Of The Dead; there are some interesting character beats and reveals as to who those characters are (and why they are there, but there’s significantly more fun in seeing the film embracing some beats of camp comedy, including a zombified animal owned by Siegfried and Roy.

In amongst the zombie fun, there are jarring beats within the movie that make Army Of The Dead somewhat unique within its own narrative, doing out of its way to challenge expectations that the movie itself has set up.

Chief amongst these is the presence of the Alpha-zombies within Vegas, a group that appear to gather culturally, even embracing (and grieving) the death of their own. The movie shows us two such leading zombies, a male and female, with the male appearing to be the same who was shown in the film’s opening scenes. Both have an identifiably family relationship, but upon the female’s apparent and unnecessary death at the hands of corporate team-member Martin (Garret Dillahunt), our lead-male zombie is seen mourning, tearing an unborn foetus from his dead partner’s body before angrily pursuing our team.

The film goes out of its way to make sure that its viewers, not its heroes, are aware of this world, and this leads to further interesting, albeit jarring, beats for the movie; this human-acting emotion amongst our zombies is the most visible, and obvious beat which paints Army Of The Dead as a significantly different type of zombie movie, but it is not alone. Viewers are similarly treated to the imagery of defeated zombies, some of whom looking or reacting significantly differently than the zombies we would expect; at least one dead zombie is shown looking more like a robot than a former-human, with the movie lingering for just too long on these shots, proving to the viewer that it is more than just a trick of the light.

There is similar intent in other elements of the movie, appearing as if to come from nowhere, but spending so much time and effort that there is clearly meaning. A lengthy conversation between Dieter and Vanderohe comes while opening the vaults, with reference to several dead bodies and used goods found nearby; those bodies dressed exactly the same as the team, and the conversation, one that appears solely to mess with the heads of viewers and characters alike, suggests that such bodies could be different versions of the same characters, caught in an eternal time-loop.

The conversation paints itself as nothing more than that, a playful tease between an established soldier and the guy who has been brought along to help. However, the movie, and the production team, spend so much time and energy drawing attention to these things that there is far more going on in this narrative than a ‘simple’ zombie-related heist.

Such a beat seems and feels overly forced, but nonetheless interesting. Yep, I want to watch Army Of The Dead again and make sense of these moments, making this a movie that I have responded to far more positively than your standard heist.

Putting both the heist and zombie elements of the narrative aside, Army Of The Dead carries some vastly interesting emotional beats for it characters, the likes of which one would expect to find in a Snyder movie, going surprisingly deep in what could be nothing more than heist-romp. The relationship between Ward and his daughter and their grief is somewhat beautiful, especially when compared with Snyder’s approach to family and grief as seen in other films. Added to such a beat is a similar approach to grief amongst the film’s small zombie family, a beat that is somewhat beautiful, openly painting our zombies as more than just the bad guys.

But there are also beats to Army Of The Dead that just don’t work, and I have to bring them up.

Those opening scenes of a recently-married couple feel unnecessarily sexualised, proven to be especially jarring given Snyder’s usual approach to sex and sexuality, usually proving a tad more subtle and far less like taken from an exploitation movie.

Similarly, the attempts to force a romantic interest between Ward and Cruz arrives from nowhere, laid on far too thick in a scene that comes seconds before her death. For a film focussing on the relationship between Ward and his daughter, that addresses the necessary death of her mother and the grief between them both, such an attempt at a romantic touch is wholly unnecessary.

Both matters are unusual for a Snyder narrative, and one can’t help but wonder if that is intentional, raising some questions for me.

Are our newlywed couple truly newlywed, or is our bride intentionally working to distract the driver and cause the crash?

Is there some temporal tomfoolery that means that those similarly clothed previous teams are, indeed, the same team?

And why on earth does the film insist on having Bautista wearing those horrible old-man glasses?

As such, Army Of The Dead certainly paints itself as a world that requires revisiting, if only to address that weird stuff, stuff that is not merely production errors. As such, I look forward to seeing what crazy elements Snyder will be bringing.

Without some of that crazy, or explanations thereof, some of these elements just prove to be beats that bit too weird, truly taking the viewer out of the film.

Knowing and liking Snyder’s work as I do, I know that there has to be a reason to this madness, and I’m just hoping and looking forward to that being embraced sooner rather than later.