"Army of the Dead": Mindless zombie fun with Matthias Schweighöfer on Netflix

On Netflix: Zack Snyder’s humorous zombie film demands little brain power from the living – and makes Matthias Schweighöfer a Hollywood star.

Elvis lives. Or maybe not. Who knows exactly in Las Vegas, where, under the blessing of a replica Statue of Liberty, in the shadow of a fake Eiffel Tower, only the celebrated banknotes are real. Even in normal times, the desert Babylon can seem somewhat surreal. But the fake Elvis, who welcomes us in Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” to the sounds of a cover version of “Viva Las Vegas”, is really borderline now. As if in a trance, he wiggles his bloody chin. He’s a zombie Elvis.

Thousands of the undead form in the opening credits of “Army of the Dead” against government troops without a chance and a few defensive, armed to the teeth desperados who have not yet been bitten. In the further course of the story they will try to steal a few earthly possessions from the zombies from a casino safe, because these are two films in one: a zombie film and a “caper movie”. The time for this is tight: The government is planning to get rid of the zombie disaster with a small atom bomb and the gamblers’ paradise at the same time. After all, many mushroom clouds rose over the Nevada desert during the Cold War.

Netflix: Six minutes full of blood in “Army of the Dead”

Anyone who has come through the bloody six minutes of the opening credits sequence can no longer complain about the following almost two and a half hours. This is the kind of film that the blood never really has time to dry. Anyone who expects the morbid, shrouded nuances of genre pioneer George A. Romero in the zombie film or even the hand-held camera realism of his classic “Night of the Living Dead” will be disappointed. This is the Las Vegas version of the whole thing in every respect: a breathless, sometimes silly parodic dance of death, in which the shuffling extras wear their impressively rotting faces as if to a masquerade ball. It’s fun.

Artfully put into a post-apocalyptic state, the gambler’s paradise finally resembles the image that moral guards have always had of it. It’s hell on earth. And whoever has his brain shot away here – because zombies are known to be the only way to finally bring them to the grave – has probably already sacrificed it to hedonism during his lifetime. If you will, Netflix is the zombie version of cinema anyway. But this is not a blockbuster from a struggling film studio that the streaming service was able to buy cheaply due to the Corona.

It is an in-house production in the Netflix program, which also gives the spectacular beginning of the film a special meaning, which explains in slow motion and without words how the city was infected by an undead and now belongs to the zombies. Even the opening credits of the old US TV series looked like presented trailers. After all, nobody should switch off anymore.

Army of the Dead: Netflix could make Matthias Schweighöfer a Hollywood star

The opening credits also briefly introduced the German surprise star: Matthias Schweighöfer plays Ludwig Dieter, the master safe cracker. Supported by a pleasantly diverse team, he is supposed to save the immense dollar reserves from a large casino. In detail, he is at his side: A dumb but clever muscleman (Dave Bautista), his estranged daughter (Ella Purnell) and his athletic-tough would-be lover (Maria Cruz) as well as an egoistic villain (Omari Hardwick) and two other unsympaths: a brutal cop (Burt Cummings) and a hard-to-assess secret agent (Garrett Dillahunt).

As it should be for a zombie film, but also for almost every disaster film, you can now place bets as to which of this dazzling personage will still see the end of the film. In any case, with Schweighöfer – whatever it means – a prequel has already been filmed. Even when others have the action in their hands, his character is the most adorable in the film. He could succeed with what his older colleague Til Schweiger was working so ambitiously for: The rise to Hollywood greatness, not only in front of but also behind the camera – he staged the previous story “Army of Thieves” himself.

Netflix production Army of the Dead – Streaming TV is still television

Always amusing the way you see Germans abroad: tinkerer Ludwig Dieter looks like a nerd tourist with his 80s Walkman headphones over his uncool jacket. Correct and a bit narrow-minded, the original version repeatedly utters a half-loud “Oh you shh…” – which is, of course, an understatement in view of the extremely threatening situation in Zombie Land. Only when the mighty safe door is due to be opened does he rave about the Götterdämmerung.

The cinema is currently experiencing one too, and this invitation to a replacement blockbuster is accepted with mixed feelings. Netflix wants something different from us than the multiplex. Once you sit in a film, you don’t have to be persuaded to stay seated – even if louder and louder teen action films seemed to be aiming for it. Streaming TV, however, is still television, and it has to assert itself against competing programs at any moment.

Army of the Dead: Alpha Zombies and Princesses on Netflix

You can see that very clearly in the film “Army of the Dead”. There is not a quiet minute in it, but at least a few atmospheric songs that want to replace what Snyder has lost in other places, for example with stupid dialogues. The cranberries should not be missing with their “Zombie” hit and the real Elvis warns of “Suspicious Minds”. He couldn’t have meant the undead. Even the most intelligent of them, called alphas, aren’t exactly characterized by remarkable brain activity.

Behind the neo-classical pillars of a gambler’s temple, they have built their rustic center of power and worship a weird nightclub beauty as a zombie princess: A punk Salomé who finally loses her own head, which her killer now carries in her backpack as barter material.

But let’s be honest: a head is really not what is particularly necessary in this film, neither when making nor when watching. (Daniel Kothenschulte)