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Dave Bautista (front) and Nora Arnezeder in a still from Army of the Dead. Photo: Netflix
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Review | Netflix movie review: Army of the Dead – Zack Snyder’s zombie heist thriller offers an entertaining shoot ’em up

  • A zombie outbreak has left Las Vegas in ruins and before a planned nuclear strike takes it out, Dave Bautista must retrieve US$200 million from a casino vault
  • Forget about the plot – this film is all about watching Bautista’s character cracking zombie skulls
American cinema
James Mottram
James Mottram
Why you can trust SCMP

3/5 stars

Zack Snyder is on a roll. After the so-called “Snyder cut” of his superhero ensemble Justice League gained generally appreciative reviews earlier this year, he’s back with Army of the Dead, a fun-packed zombie heist thriller.

The film returns Snyder to the very beginnings of his filmmaking career when he remade George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead in 2004 – somewhat controversially, because it depicted zombies that ran rather than shuffled. Since then, these creatures have accelerated in popularity thanks to shows like The Walking Dead. But despite this surfeit of flesh-eaters on our screens, Army of the Dead, which Snyder co-scripted with Shay Hatten and Joby Harold, offers something different.

Set in Las Vegas, a zombie outbreak has left the gambling capital of the world in ruins. With the city already walled off, a nuclear strike is planned to hit it on Independence Day – some real July 4 fireworks.

Before the obliteration, Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a former Vegas resident and burger chef who has done his bit fighting zombies, gets a proposition from Hiroyuki Sanada’s casino boss: get a team together, break through the quarantine zone and retrieve US$200 million stored in his casino’s vaults. Among his gang are mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), a safe-cracker named Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and his own estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), who has her own reasons for going.

The father-daughter dynamic is probably the least convincing aspect of the film, which really is about watching the muscle-mountain Bautista cracking zombie skulls. Fortunately, Snyder doesn’t take things too seriously here; case in point: Culture Club’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? is heard during one zombie killing spree in a lift. Other cuts are pretty evocative too – not least a burst of The Cranberries’ Zombie, a song that’s simply been crying out for use in a movie about the undead.

Although the 2½-hour running time is indulgent, Snyder makes excellent use of his Las Vegas setting – with one shot of a zombie atop the replica Statue of Liberty particularly evocative. Given Dawn of the Dead, with its shopping centre setting, was a metaphor for consumerism, Snyder’s latest may be seen as a continuation of that – a reflection of a greed-driven, get-rich-quick society where the lure of money is too great to resist, even if it turns you into a flesh-eating zombie.

From left: Raul Castillo, Omari Hardwick and Ana de la Reguera in a still from Army of the Dead. Photo: Clay Enos/Netflix

However you want to read it, Army of the Dead is a thoroughly entertaining shoot ’em up.

Army of the Dead will start streaming on Netflix on May 21.

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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Zombie heist film an entertaining shoot ’em up
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