By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I love Zack Snyder’s remake of “Dawn Of The Dead”. I feel like I should be completely upfront right off the bat because that fact ultimately contributes to my opinion of “Army Of The Dead”. I’m not even really a zombie guy generally but I do hold Romero’s original “Dawn Of The Dead” in high esteem, so when I heard that they were doing a remake in the early 2000s (shortly before they remade basically every horror film with name value), I was pissed. There was no way they could do better than Romero, so why try? I guess I should mention that these were the thoughts and opinions of a 20 year old horror nerd. Anyway, when Snyder’s “Dawn Of The Dead” came out, I grudgingly saw it…because of course I did… and it was actually good? To be honest, it was great. It wasn’t really a remake of Romero’s film as much as it was the same idea of a group of survivors in a mall trying to survive in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. It’s a film that I still love to this day. I’m telling you all of this because as much as I generally try to avoid walking into any movie with expectations, I couldn’t really help walking into “Army Of The Dead” with them. I’m not entirely sure how much they factored into my overall feelings as much as there was a combination of factors that may have worked against it though.
As I said, Zack Snyder’s “Dawn Of The Dead” was released in 2004. It’s currently 2021, which means it’s taken almost two decades for Snyder to produce a sequel. It’s hard to really call “Army Of The Dead” a sequel though. There’s little (if any) connective tissue to the aforementioned 2004 film other than the presence of hordes of zombies. Without spoilers, the plot of “Army Of The Dead” essentially boils down to the idea that a zombie escaped government containment on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The city then became overrun with zombies. Vegas was subsequently walled off from the rest of the country. The U.S. is about to nuke Las Vegas in an attempt to wipe the zombies out. Before that happens, a casino owner named Tanaka tasks Dave Bautista’s character of Scott Ward with bringing a team into Vegas to recover two-hundred million from his vault. Ward assembles a team to accomplish the task ala Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and we’re off to the races. As you can imagine, since zombies are a major part of the plot… most of the team doesn’t live long enough to get their share of the job’s take.
If that description doesn’t really sound like a horror film, then you’ve basically grasped the main thing that bums me out about the belated follow up to 2004’s “Dawn Of The Dead”. That film definitely has a fair amount of action but is truly a horror film. It’s a very intense and visceral piece of work filled to the brim with legitimate scares. “Army Of The Dead” starts off that way, sure. The opening scene definitely brings back positive memories of Snyder coming out of the gate showing how adept he was at horror. After that, not only is it not really a horror film… it’s not a particularly exciting one for quite a while. The “Ocean’s Eleven” bit I mentioned alone feels like it takes FOREVER. It bums me out that the pacing is how it is because even the unrated/extended/director’s edition or whatever you want to call it version of Snyder’s “Dawn Of The Dead” is a phenomenally paced piece of work. This film definitely feels like there’s a really strong version of it that could have been had it been for a few more editing passes but for whatever reason, that was deemed unnecessary. That might be expected from the dude who has a 4 hour version of “Justice League” but I don’t even completely blame Snyder for this movie’s pacing issues. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a Snyder bro but when his stuff works, I’m compelled. I obviously love the 2004 film and his next, “300”. Hell, I even really like his version of “Justice League”. The problem with this film is more or less the same problem I have with Scorcese’s film for Netflix, “The Irishman”. It’s great that Netflix is a studio that lets filmmakers do whatever they want but the blind trust and the fact that Netflix isn’t really concerned with runtime has led to kind of a kitchen sink filmmaking technique that doesn’t really work. “Army Of The Dead” suffers because it’s often given so much breathing room that it sacrifices any kind of tension for it.
That doesn’t mean it’s all bad though. I do think that when the genre bits are actually in full swing, Snyder is definitely showing glimpses of why he was such an exciting filmmaker coming off of the one-two punch of “Dawn Of The Dead” and “300”. When we’re fully entrenched in action or horror bits, they do work and they generally work quite well. Another integral part of the stuff that works is the cast but when I say that, I’m referring to Dave Bautista more than anyone else. The fact that the cast is anchored by Bautista ultimately means so much for the film overall. It feels weird for me to say that. I used to hate the guy. I’m a fan of pro wrestling but was never a fan of his work in WWE. When he first started acting, I had zero interest. However, I’ve yet to see anything where he didn’t absolutely bring it. Bautista never takes the easy way out and just plays macho tough guy action heroes. He always seems to actually work against the more overly masculine elements of his characters to bring a depth and a sensitivity that’s always really interesting to watch, especially in contrast to his imposing physicality. As a matter of fact, if he wasn’t so goddamn good, Tig Notaro would absolutely steal the movie from him. A late addition made after the original actor’s unsavory reputation came to light, I can’t picture anyone pulling off what Notaro did. She’s pure entertainment in every scene she’s in. I also want to single out Nora Arnezeder as “the coyote” that brings the crew into zombified Vegas and is mostly tasked with giving exposition and being a badass. It could be a pretty empty part but Arnezeder is magnetic.
I can’t say that I’m not disappointed by “Army Of The Dead”. That doesn’t mean it’s terrible or not worth watching or anything like that. As I said at the top, I couldn’t really help having expectations walking in. Even removing them from the table though, objectively, it is a flawed piece of work. I can’t really recommend it. However, it’s not without its high points. It’s not without charm. Stuff about it works. I do believe that it coming from Snyder, having had almost two decades of thinking about what he’d do with a follow up led to a lot of new and original ideas that you don’t always get from zombie films. Part of me wishes he had just shaped the story and given up direction to someone that was as hungry as he was when he made “Dawn Of The Dead” in 2004 but as it is… it’s fine. It’s just nothing special.
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