Army of the Dead review – satisfying but bloated zombie-heist hybrid

Back in 2004, Zack Snyder made his debut – and his career – with a $26 million remake of Dawn of the Dead, still his most purely enjoyable film to date. Now, 17 years later, he returns to the same blood-splattered territory with the original Romero riff Army of the Dead. Is that what they call coming full circle? The difference this time round is the abundance of financial backing – $90 million, courtesy of Netflix, who have provided heaps of cash but little in the way of studio notes.

Somewhere in here there’s a lesson about less being more, filmmakers faring better when the only option is their own ingenuity. But that might be giving Amy of the Dead less credit than it deserves. Messy and bloated as it is, one could hardly say it doesn't deliver on its promise. That's to say, Army of the Dead is a satisfying zombie yarn with a twist: it’s also a heist movie, not so different – you sense purposely – from your Fast and Furious films, and just as keen to keep the franchise fires burning.

It's simple, really: Las Vegas has been overrun by a massive zombie horde. The US government plan to nuke the walled-off city within days, putting an end to the outbreak for good. But what about all that cash, still contained in the safe of one of the city's biggest casinos? So we spend close to an hour – one whole hour! – gathering the team together, a motley crew – the best played by Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Matthias Schweighöfer and Tig Notaro – who like shooting things but don't exactly radiate with complex characterisation. In fact, most are just here to serve as zombie fodder in the third act.

Right from the virtuoso opening credit sequence, arguably the movie's best scene, the excessive intentions are laid bare. While it's never subtle (Snyder uses the Cranberries' “Zombie” as a musical cue), its director's trademark sincerity keeps you invested. Forced emotional cues and logical lapses (would Bautista really let his daughter tag along on such a suicidal mission?) are outweighed by a conveyor belt of inventive set-pieces (look out for Chekhov's Zombie Tiger) and a few genre-bending surprises (zombies riding horses, anyone?). As Snyder films, go, too, this one's less concerned with CG and slo-mo than you'd expect, the emphasis on gory kills that pay tribute to a legacy of zombie films powered by practical effects.

There is admittedly no reason this needs to be 148 minutes long (cue arbitrary reference explaining it's six minutes longer than 2001: A Space Odyssey). And while zombie movies and social commentary tend to go hand in hand, Army of the Dead hasn't really got much to say about anything. Yet perhaps the biggest problem here is that the movie hasn't found its way into UK theatres; such unpretentious, grandiose, crowd-pleasing spectacle, ironically, might have been just the thing to help raise cinema back from the dead in the wake of our very own pandemic.

Army of the Dead is now streaming on Netflix.