Army of the Dead 2021 film is directed by Zack Snyder, and this is his return to the horror genre after Dawn of the Dead in 2004, which is a film of his I really enjoy.
After a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries led by Dave Batiste takes the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
Now that movie theaters are starting to open again and some folks are choosing to go out and see a film.
I’ve been wanting to see a film that I can just relax, sit back, enjoy, have a giant tub of popcorn, and kind of forget about everything.
And we don’t get that many of those movies anymore. A lot of things want to be very serious and remind us of the world that we live in. And so I was very much hoping that Zack Snyder’s Army of the dead 2021 film would do that for me, and it did.
This movie was an absolute blast. I had such a good time with this movie.
Just the opening credits scene alone is phenomenal. I feel like the opening credits of the movie deserve to be considered for future list of best opening credits of all time.
And Zack Snyder’s name is all over those credits. Not only did he take part in the screenplay, the producing and obviously the directing, he is the director of photography. He’s a cinematographer for the whole movie.
There are instances throughout the movie where he overuses very shallow focus. Characters walk away out of focus. He doesn’t pull focus with them. He just lets it stay soft the whole time. It’s the type of thing that I wouldn’t really reference.
But it happens a lot. And for some people, that could get really annoying. It’s not like it took me out of the movie that much. I just started to notice how often he does it. What I really liked about this movie is that it combines a lot of different kinds of zombies.
You have your classic George Romero zombies that are pounding against the cabin wall and they’re very slow and they’re kind of stupid.
You have your Danny Boyle 28 days later, zombies that are running at you really fast and they’re just going to tear out your jugular.
But there are also zombies in the film that are very smart. They call them alpha zombies. They’re in control of the others.
Those zombies listen to them because this place is basically like a John Carpenter’s escape from New York kingdom for these zombies.
They have leaders, they have ranks. And that was really interesting just to see the whole mythology that he crafted behind this Las Vegas outbreak.
I also like Dave Batista on the movie quite a bit. I think this movie really showcases his range because I love Guardians as Drax. But he does have a surprising amount of range as an actor and he’s really damn good in the movie. It’s also surprisingly very funny. There were a lot of jokes that really hit for me.
Where the film falters a little bit is in its very bloated runtime. The movie does not have to be two and a half hours. A lot of Zack Snyder films are a little bit too long. I could easily see about 15 minutes of this movie being cut out.
There are scenes that sometimes go a few frames longer than they really need to be. The pace could be tightened just ever so much.
There are a few times where it feels like the information you’re getting just isn’t important and the scene could just end.
There are also times where Snyder goes for something that’s very surprising, but it also creates a disservice to the characters that he sets up.
There are some scenes where you feel very invested in what could potentially happen for two characters and their future.
And he throws something in there at the last second that is dramatic and it creates a slow-motion sequence with somebody screaming and their voice echoes and it gets murky and it reverberates.
And you get a song that you might not expect to be in a zombie movie, which is a very Zack Snyder thing that he likes to do.
So at times, he will sacrifice interesting characters for shock value. And for some that will really work. You might like the surprise of something unexpected happening, but I was a little let down that I was getting invested in characters that he was setting up, and then suddenly he doesn’t seem to care about the future of those characters.
And I didn’t love how he chose to end the film. It feels like the movie has a definitive ending and then there are like ten more minutes.
Again, that’s something that Snyder has done in the past. But honestly, I just had a really good time watching this movie. I felt like I was in a real movie again.
You know what I mean? Like in the theater, there were only like five people there, but still like this big giant screen popcorn. It just everything felt right.
And the little nitpicked that I have about the movie. It didn’t stop me from having a great time.
I’m going to give Army of the Dead 2021 Horror Film a B.
if you feel comfortable going to a movie right now, it is in theaters. If you don’t, it’s going to be on Netflix really soon. Either way, I think you should check it out, especially if you like his daughter, The Dead movie.
Guys, thank you so much as always for reading my reviews. Look forward to more reviews very soon. See you next time.
