Army of the Dead (2021)

I had high hopes for Zack Snyder's second zombie romp after thoroughly enjoying his Dawn Of The Dead remake (2004) despite the controversy over so called 'fast' zombies. It was also a measly one hour and fifty minutes, a running time that Zack Snyder has long left buried in a hole. Army Of The Dead is two and a half hours long, and it is absolute rubbish. After a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, the city is sealed off to keep the outbreak contained, and the government is a few days away from dropping a nuclear bomb on it to eradicate the problem for good. Dave Batista and a crew of increasingly irritating co-stars are given the opportunity to sneak in before the blast an grab an enormous amount of cash from a safe in a casino, set the task by an individual whose backstory or purpose is not explained once. There is a colourful and fun opening credits sequence where there is plenty of gore and death, but it's sadly the carcasses that we see on screen that end up being a metaphor for what the film becomes after that. It's a nonsensical, non-fun, rottenly acted steaming pile of zombie horse droppings (it's not worth seeing the film to understand that reference so it's kind of a waste). Snyder's eye for an artful shot is completely wasted on boring and staggeringly stupid dialogue, the supposed comic relief from certain characters is rancid bordering on insulting. Dave Batista is rubbish, which is a real shame because I like Batista, but he's far from the worst offender. At the beginning of the film we predicted what would become to the characters after being introduced to them; we were completely correct and the final insult was not having the predicted deaths come quick enough, in what is both a disappointment (because this could have been fun) but also a film so terrible that I began to worry that I may have been too kind to Snyder before. I'm not willing to go back and check, but Army Of The Dead is drivel. 3.0/10