Army of the Dead

Unfuckingbelievable things comes true and I'm excited like never before! Since World War Z and Train to Busan, there hasn't been a more epic zombie flick, and if someone can't appreciate it, they're an ungrateful cold swine and have become my number one enemy! Zack Snyder evolves zombies into intelligent, fast, and organized bad ass assholes, and I swallowed it all up and sold myself to him like a €20 prostitute at a train station. Zack Snyder gets completely unleashed chains with a pumped-up opening, undoubtedly the best zombie opening in the history of cinema, followed by an entertaining introduction to the characters and the recruiting of the team members. No character is superfluous and the viewer cares about each of them. Matthias Schweighöfer may not be another Kano, but he handles the humor cleverly, the zombie make-up effects are amazing, the action is uncompromising and grand. Zack Snyder takes gore to the next level, and there may not have been a bigger carnage in horror since Evil Dead. I also have to praise the music and the occasionally unpleasant atmosphere (walking among hibernating zombies is downright beautifully horrifying, and I was reminded of Silent Hill). The fight with the tiger is the best animal attack since The Revenant! And the finale crushes balls like nothing in a long time, I was literally experiencing heart attack states. There are also plenty of interesting and innovative ideas here like zombie animals, intelligent zombies that know martial-arts, hibernating zombies, a zombie heist, pregnant zombies, and the traps in front of the vault. Of course, according to local ratings, people naively expected twists like in Game of Thrones and cry over how stupid, action-packed, brutal, and stylish it is. Well, I would prefer to lock them up in a pen among other sheep so they can watch another drama, preferably about a black lesbian, a woman of the 21st century, a vegan, a superior feminist, an influencer visiting Starbucks and swiping on Tinder in the evenings, with a son addicted to drugs and facing murder charges. Oh, that would surely be a more fulfilling experience. Hopefully, another great zombie film will come out in another six years. If Father 2 comes out before the sequel to this, I will vomit fire. 10/10. (05/21/2021)

An unreasonably overblown runtime and a quantum of Snyder’s love it or hate it style in a solid (read through and through bland) unacknowledged adaptation of “Dead Rising 2”. It actually works quite well as a tired C-rated video game adaptation, but not so well as a zombie heist B-movie that plays with the rules of the genre. It undeniably has its strong moments and scenes (marred by shaky camerawork), but there are fewer than one would expect from the self-proclaimed king of "tinsel cool" on a project where he had a free hand. (05/21/2021)

After Sucker Punch, it was said that Zack Snyder should not have written his own screenplays. After this movie, however, it will be said that he should not have written his own screenplays, however, more importantly, he should never get behind the camera again! Army of the Dead is an incredible piece of crap, and a movie so visually boring and hideous, that the lack of visual stimulation makes one wonder about the logic behind all the action in the movie, and it is a disaster. It makes no sense at all, the characters are terribly written, the storylines are left unfinished, the attempts at humor are just not funny, and any attempt at drama does not work. I also did not feel any sort of horror at all. If I give this turgid crap any credit at all, perhaps the only thing is that even with its unnecessarily overlong length, it never gets boring, something is constantly happening. However, at the same time nothing really happens that would drive you crazy. So, those are the damn few positives for a movie maker who years ago gave us one of the best zombie horror movies of the new century. Today, unfortunately, he is a parody of himself. (06/08/2021)

I don't understand what happened to Zack Snyder, a guy who has the brilliant Watchmen and the very good Man of Steel in his filmography and never really burned out creatively until now, to make shit like this. Pathetic, fucking boring and visually repulsive (no, the juicy opening credits and those few Las Vegas green screens don't cut it). It has only one decent action scene – the casino shootout – which doesn't come until half an hour before the end, and one single noteworthy idea, which is the zombie tiger. And leading the uninteresting ensemble of actors is Dave Bautista, whose acting limits end somewhere near Hamáček's abilities when he talks about his disguise maneuver. (05/24/2021)

I know that swearing at Zack Snyder is in vogue now, but remember, track pants were in vogue once, too. For me, Army of the Dead is a completely hassle-free, fun action film with a team of characters who are or less, let's say, equal to the team from Aliens, and it has an interesting story that doesn't make things easy for those characters at all. Ever since the opening credits sequence, which Snyder does great, the film had me in the palm of its hand and didn't let me go. It looks great, it sounds great (I want a complete soundtrack, even a song soundtrack), it's fun and it was more than good enough for me. Only the big screen was missing from it being perfect - man, how great would Army of the Dead be in the movie theater!? (05/22/2021)