I like Zack Snyder, so I was odds-on going to like his latest effort – a brazenly wild attempt to combine heist action and zombie horror. The result is a flawed but enjoyable bout of glitz and gore.
The premise is perfect: A group of mercenaries plan a casino heist within a zombie infested Las Vegas… It never hits the highs that that setup puts forth in your mind, but its an audacious mix of genres that entertained me nonetheless.
The main problem with ‘Army of the Dead’ is a dearth of interesting characters – or even likeable ones, to be honest – so there’s no character to really root for unless you like the actors portraying them. There’s also some rubbish lines of dialogue that only viewers with incredibly low standards of humour or those partial to D-movie schlock will smirk at, while the rest of us roll our eyes for the umpteenth time.
For the most part the visuals hold up. Explosions are iffy, but the dilapidated Las Vegas looks good, and the zombies are appropriately gruesome. Even though the runtime goes well beyond the 2-hour mark, this didn’t drag for me; plus there’s a 30 minute section near the end that’s just a preposterously entertaining bloodbath to help it to the finish line. It won’t last long in the memory, but Zack Snyder does deliver some fun action horror for fans of his work.
Score – 7/10
The SS Criticism 