Army of the Dead (2021) Movie Review

Army of the dead is a film directed and written by Zack Snyder, after watching Justice League by Zack Snyder I wanted to see more things of this director since I feel that he has potential and to tell the truth, films that he has directed outside the superhero genre tend to be nice acclaimed, that's howI got ready to watch Army of the Dead and I have to say that I was not disappointed but I was not amazed either Zack´s work and I feel that Army of the Dead despite being an interesting zombie movie, I have to say that it has certain things that don´t end up convincing me too much of its direction. Army of the Dead is currently available on Netflix, so I recommend that you take a look at it.

Army of the Dead was released this year by Netflix and is about a group of mercenaries who must cross Las Vegas infested with zombies, their mission is to collect important money that was kept sealed in a building, this job can be quite complicated since zombies have more intelligence than usual, same applies to their strength since these zombies are more agile, stronger and faster than normal so it will take more than skill to finish the mission and not to let everyone die. This movie has an interesting approach and you can tell from the beginning that it will be full of frenzy and action or so I thought. The first scene of this movie is curious, since as I just mentioned it is quite a frantic scene, so we can say that the film has a powerful start, at least the first minutes, the problem with this is that the first hour of the film is simple exposure, after having started strong, Army of the dead chooses to have a slow and leisurely pace introducing all its characters and its world, the quarantine situation in which La Vegas finds itself and something of the past of our protagonist, this would not have any problem if the film did not take a whole hour to do all of this that could well be done in less time, at the end of the film all that exposure from the beginning really was good for nothing.

After the first hour has passed, Army of the Dead becomes more digestible as the characters infiltrate the zombie-filled building and this is where I felt the movie shone, in the action scenes. It is well known that Zack Snyder is good at performing these types of scenes and the truth is noticeable since they are full of frenzy and many things happening at the same time, remember that a simple step can be quite fatal so the characters meaning they will have to be very careful walking around the building. In general, I must say that Army of the dead has a weird pacing as sometimes it feels slow, other times fast and frantic, others just feel stucked and could basically be characterized as a roller coaster that goes up and down. Now, this is one of those films that present several characters so at first it is understood that it has been taken a whole hour to present them and that is the problem, I will be totally frank and the truth is that most characters in Army of the dead do not have much relevance: they arrive, they die and that's it. Sometimes even the movie dares to open character plots in the middle of the whole movie to just kill the character in the next minute which was absurd to me and makes the first part of the movie unnecessarily long.

In general, I liked that the characters mostly have intelligence and are not simple cannon bait, normally in this type of film the characters are usually very silly but at least this time they are competent for their situation, no applies to everyone but the effort is appreciated. Being a zombie movie, Army of the Dead can be a bit disappointing if you want the whole movie to be a frenzy but the truth, as I mentioned before, Army of the dead takes a long time to introduce you to its world and characters so it is very likely that the movie will become boring if you do not engage with the film or some of the characters. I like the fact that Zack Snyder tried to give this movie his style placing the zombies somewhat smarter and stronger, I must also add that Army of the dead has a very good soundtrack. My last thoughts on Army of the Dead is that I don't consider it to be the worst zombie film to date as some people say, however I don´t consider it to be one of the best either, Army of the Dead manages to be a good film whose negative points slightly overshadow the positive ones, but that in general terms, I must say it is an enjoyable film and if you like Zack Snyder's work you should check it out on Netflix.