Army Of The Dead Review

 Ever since the much-awaited release of the directors cut of Justice League, fans around the globe have been waiting to see the next phase in Zack Synder’s post DC film canon. The apocalyptic zombie adventure Army of the Dead has been in the news for many reasons and the most important of them being Zack’s union with Netflix this time for an original OTT release , a very odd destination for a filmmaker known for his big ticket, comic-like CGI extravaganzas. 

The film is very aware of its own limitations in the sense that Snyder never stresses on exposition and the setup is quite economical in the first hour with the stakes clearly laid out with little fuzz. The film begins with the doomsday like zombie outbreak in Las Vegas and a subsequently quarantined city fighting to stay alive and to this enters a casino owner Bly Tanaka who tracks down an ex mercenary Scott Ward (Dave Batiesta) for the ultimate heist to retrieve millions from his Casino located in the hotspot of the outbreak to retrieve millions of dollars from his locker before the government sanctioned bombing of the affected area is scheduled to happen.

Scott is loathing away with grief staying afar from his long-estranged daughter and lost in the memories of his dead wife who he had to put down before she turned. The daughter Kate Scott (Ella Purnell) who is a volunteer in the local quarantine camp is distant from her father and takes care of her friend Geetha ( Huma Qureshi ) who is an inhabitant of the quarantine center living with her two little kids trying to find a way to escape the dread and sexual advances dashed out by the camp wardens at unsuspecting women stuck with nowhere left to run.

 Scott is asked by Bly to set up a team of ex mercenaries and carry out their plan for a whopping reward of fifty million dollars. The team is setup consisting of a few of Scott’s ex-teammates and contacts. The true thrill in the writing of the movie lies with the subversive use of the heist film trappings against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, a relatively untapped setting for the genre. The film is packed with an array of convenient clichés associated with the genre and all boxes are ticked. However, Zack Snyder and his team of writers are more interested in the group dynamics and the personal arcs of these characters stuck between the two worlds. We do get the gore, visuals and atmosphere that we have come to expect from these kind of movies but Snyder ties all this around the functional story of a father's attempts at connecting back with his daughter who accompanies him on the mission to save her friend Geetha who is held hostage with the clan of zombies after a bizarre turn of events.

We don’t have any surprises as far as plot goes but the few and far in between interactions between Scott and his daughter makes us ready for an emotional payoff at the end. The ending of the movie nicely mirrors the core conflict of the father daughter relationship and ties the knot perfectly with a predictable resolution. The camera stays on the characters at all times and Snyder decides to literally place the decaying chaotic city out of the focus with emphasis on characters faces as his canvas for the splendid looking, innovative but not spectacular zombie spectacle.