Movie Review - Army of the Dead (2021)

[Dave Gray]

Army of the Dead (2021)

Premise: Before a zombie-filled Vegas is nuked, a team of mercenaries plans a heist on a casino vault.

Rating: Some cool imagery isn't enough to save this undeveloped story.

This is a very frustrating movie for me.  The elevator pitch is really cool.  It's literally like the intro to a video game -- it's a cool premise and there's literally nothing more.  The character motivations don't make sense and are even inconsistent in their not making sense.  Ideas that seem cool are introduced and then dropped.  There really isn't a narrative thread.  And the heist itself is quite terrible.

The cast is decent enough and Batista carries a load.  The zombies themselves have some really cool renaissance or even religious imagery, trying to create some lore,  but it's all for nothing, because the bones around it are so poorly conceived.

I can't really say that the movie is boring -- you watch it with interest, with the hope that the things they're doing are setting up payoffs...and then they just don't.  It's very, very odd and the script-writing is worse than amateur fan-fiction.  I can't believe that this was greenlit without a script overhaul.

Also, even for a zombie movie with cool imagery, this is SOOOO LOOOONG.  It's 2.5 hours of nonsense.  Even if it's going to be dumb and shitty with underdeveloped characters -- cut 45 minutes out of it.  It takes the time to set the characters and relationships up, and still doesn't do it!

SPOILERS --

There are so many things that are bafflingly crazy about this movie that I can't wrap my head around.

- The driving character motivation for the lead daughter was to rescue a woman who wandered into the zombie zone and didn't return.  She is presumed dead, by all accounts, and the risks to go after her are just too high.  And the only reason is because she's a mom.  It's just super duper thin and it makes you actively dislike the daughter, because she's stupid and putting her dad at risk for this lady.  But what's incredibly weird is that after the whole movie, where so much is done to save this woman, there's a crash and the daughter just wanders away and never checks on the woman.  We never hear from her again.

- The team is put together based on their specialties -- One dude is a super zombie killer on youtube.  He never kills zombies in a cool way.  It's just mentioned to show a clip and then never dealt with again.  Another guy uses a big saw...it's like his thing.  He even tells someone else "don't touch my saw".  He never uses the saw.

- The heist itself is super uninteresting and also doesn't make sense.  The one putting the job together -- it's his vault!  He should be able to tell the squad what to expect or even the combination!  When the squad arrives, the vault is like Indiana Jones, with poison darts and a bunch of stuff that just doesn't fit the tone of this movie.  It just comes out of nowhere.

- Several things are hinted at or sometimes explicitly stated that foreshadow things that never happen.  Some of them: Someone mentions that the zombies that are stalled out get rehydrated when it rains and that it gets really crazy.  (It never rains in the movie...that's thrown away.)   They find another heist team that was sent before them, indicating...something???  But it's explicitly stated (not implied) that because they're dressed the same, that maybe there's some kind of time loop.  (There's no time loop...that's thrown away.)   It's hinted that what they'll find in the safe will answer some other questions or that there's a surprise.  (Nope, it's just a stack of money.)  The helicopter is broken when they show up, indicating that they're going to have to think on their feet and find a different way out.  (Nevermind, the helicopter works again.)

- Characters suddenly have an entire character arc the immediate second before they are killed.  The Batista love interest (?) who up to that point is just another bad-ass mercenary is like "oh by the way, I love you which is why I'm here" and I'm like...wait...what?  We're 2 hrs and 15 minutes in and you're going to give these two characters a relationship?  And then she's dead in the next 20 seconds.  The same thing happens with the helicopter pilot, who sticks with everyone for days, then leaves with the helicopter 15 seconds early, then turns around because of a conscience.  I didn't have any reason to think that character was selfish, then they're selfish, then they're not selfish, then they're dead.  That all happens in the immediate minute before their death.

- There are many other half-baked ideas that are kinda present, but not thought out well enough to make sense -- the guy wants an alpha zombie head to make an army, but then he tries to backstab the team -- I don't understand why he's trying to kill everyone, putting himself further at risk for no reason.  I even really liked some stuff with the zombie baby and the worship and the alpha zombies and all of that.  But it didn't come together because the plot around it is nonsense.  There is some immigration/Guantanamo Bay allegory but none of it works, yet a lot of time is put towards it.


In the end, this isn't a thought-out movie.  It's someone who liked the idea of the Dead Rising video game and thought it should be a movie, but didn't write a plot that made any sense.

The basic premise is so cool and this could've been super dope and it's just not.