Criticism of "Army of the Dead": The failed attempt to resurrect a genre

That Zack Snyder returned to the genre that saw him born was the hope for many of getting to enjoy his best version again. One that, as in his debut film Dawn of the Dead, was overflowing with that popcorn terror, light and with a gut-based gore-based visceral humor. The army of the dead meant the flight at the end of the comic and the heroes that had brought so many headaches with Warner to move to a Netflix product, in which he had total creative freedom. There were no more excuses, Snyder had made the movie he wanted to make. Unfortunately, this post-apocalyptic heist in Las Vegas fails in all its bets, creating a film that like one of its creatures “falls to pieces.” That seriousness and solemnity are not going to be present in Army of the Dead is seen from its beginning. As the filmmaker did with Watchmen, the credits are the perfect excuse to tell how the zombie plague has devoured the city of the game, under the musical enclave Viva las Vegas. In the same way it introduces the main characters and lands the final situation of how this story begins. The city of Las Vegas has been sealed off by the military, which in a few days will launch a nuclear bomb to destroy the zombie threat, thus preventing any spread to the rest of the world. This is where billionaire Bly Tanaka comes in, asking Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) to team up to enter the casino in the city besieged by the undead and get his money back before it is wiped off the map. that in this musical presentation, Snyder does know how to convey the drama, with a certain irony of the initial events of the plague.But instead, afterwards we lose all interest in some characters with whom in theory we should empathize more. Once the start-up is over, it all goes downhill. Snyder loses all bets Like a bad player, the filmmaker bets mindlessly in various ways, losing each and every one of them. When something should be funny it is not and, at the time of a supposedly dramatic death, laughter is guaranteed. So obvious are his intentions that he often falls into infantilism. A perfect example of this is choosing for the final sequence of a Zombie movie a version of the Zombie song by The Cranberries. The story does not work in its final decisions, but it does not work in the construction of the relationship between its characters. Fascinatingly, the irrelevance conveyed by the father-daughter family drama shoehorn into the film and Snyder’s inability to create motivations and goals that aren’t totally ridiculous. Once again Army of the Dead is yet another case of aesthetic slavery he’s into. exposed its director, doomed to the indefensible bombast of an inexcusable project. There are no culprits beyond each and every one of the failed decisions he makes in the film to try to resurrect and bring a dead genre back into fashion.