Monday 24 May 2021

Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2021)


In his wisdom, Zack Snyder has decided to shoehorn a zombie film in between his DC superhero blockbusters, since apparently we need another one and no-one has quite filled the glaring gap in the market for undead carnage hung on a heist film framework. In brief, wrestling lunk Dave Bautista puts together a team to extract $200 million from a vault in the ruins of zombie-infested Las Vegas before the Government nukes the city. Somehow, the mayhem has to be padded out to an hour past its reasonable running time by including Bautista trying to engage with his estranged daughter and pointless parallel attempts to humanise the monsters. It adds absolutely nothing to the genre, but does remind you to go and rewatch the original Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead for gallows humour and 28 Days Later for actual scares. Instead, we get explosions and slo-mo shooting of big guns, Snyder's most chronic addiction, as lens flare is that of J.J. Abrams.
Quite bewilderingly, a prequel was deemed bankable and has already been made.

4/10