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The Telegraph
Army of the Dead, review: Zack Snyder’s zombie flick is a big, bombastic thrill
Dir: Zack Snyder. Starring: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Nora Arnezeder, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Garret Dillahunt, Tig Notaro, Matthias Schweighöfer, Raúl Castillo, Hiroyuki Sanada. 18 cert, 148 mins Few things make our fear-circuits fizz like a human body moving in ways that it shouldn’t. For as long as the zombie movie has been up and shuffling, this has always been its signature scare – the rickety, limb-twisting gait of its rotting antagonists, that makes us feel, perhaps on some evolutionarily implanted level, that something elementally wrong is afoot. Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead must be among the most bombastic and grandiose zombie films ever made. At two and a half hours, it’s also one of the longest – albeit still 94 minutes shorter than his recent director’s cut of Justice League. Yet it always remembers that horror, like magic, is an art form that does its best work at close quarters. The Cirque du Soleil-like contortions of its gnashing corpses have a showmanship that befits the Las Vegas setting, but they’re also unnerving on the flesh-and-blood level over which studio-made horror films so often glide. With Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, it was Snyder’s high-octane 2004 remake of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead that defibrillated the entire zombie genre for modern times. Army of the Dead is a kindred spirit of, rather than sequel to, Snyder’s earlier film – but it still cleaves faithfully to the Romero template, with its gaggle of abrasive, slippery lead characters that don’t obviously qualify as heroes, and its generous dousings of vinegary cynicism and apocalyptic dread. The film begins in what appears to be the present day, as secret military convoy – whose codename, The Four Horsemen, is frankly tempting fate – crashes on the motorway outside the desert gambling resort and unleashes an undead plague on the visitors and locals. As the opening credits roll to a tacky cover version of Viva Las Vegas, we’re shown what feels like a breakneck recap of a nonexistent previous instalment, as characters we don’t yet know battle for survival in various inventively gruesome scenarios. High-rollers are devoured in their jacuzzis by cadaverous showgirls and braindead hordes shuffle through halls of winking slot machines (along with other lusty honks of the metaphor klaxon).