Army of the Dead (2021) - This is every zombie movie rolled into one

Alas, Zack Snyder, I knew him well.  I'm a huge zombie fan and therefore loved George A Romero's 1979 classic 'Dawn of the Dead.' Naturally, I was sceptical when I heard it was being remade, but, to my surprise, Snyder handled it well.  Plus his next few films were pretty good, too (I even enjoyed 'Man of Steel').  Therefore, I had high hopes when I heard he was returning to the genre and almost being given a free run with the story and production.

I knew 'Army of the Dead' was not in any way related to his 'Dawn of the Dead' remake, so I was ready for something new.  What I got was an all-you-can-eat buffet of every aspect of a zombie movie ever put to film.

It was like the producers had thrown various cool zombie-related ideas into a hat and then chosen the best.  However, they obviously thought ALL the ideas were the best and so decided to put every last one into the finished product.

You end up with sleeping zombies, dried out zombies who wake up in the rain, robot zombies (yes, seriously), slow zombies, fast zombies, martial artist zombies, zombie animals, zombie queens and kings and, of course, zombies in love.

Now, you'd think with all those elements the film should last about five hours or be more like a long-running TV series.  However, most of those above are never really expanded upon, let, alone explained.

Meanwhile you have the overall plot of a team of mercenaries (most of which are stereotypes who you'll hate, others just criminals) who are trying to rob a vault in a Las Vegas hotel - even though the owner of the hotel has recruited them, making people wonder why he just didn't give them the key.

Naturally, the rest of America isn't too happy about having a city infested with flesh-eaters and have walled it off.  Now they're going to nuke it and make sure there's a 'no fly zone' in place over the city.  Of course this doesn't mean that people can't fly out, so as long as they get their hands on a chopper (which will somehow fit the bags and bags of money they've stolen, the US airforce will be fine with just letting them go.

It doesn't make sense.  Nothing really makes much sense.  Some zombies are practically indestructible... until they're needed to die - then they go down with just a head-shot.  It's a mess and it's all over the place.  One thing though - it is pretty well shot in places.  But just when you get one good looking scene, it's kind of spoiled by Snyder's direction when he focuses in on one thing in shot leaving everything else blurred all around it.

Perhaps if you've never seen a zombie movie before this one might impress you.  Or you're the most forgiving person when it comes to plot holes and things that just make you want to roll your eyes.  If this was the only undead movie around it would be a blockbuster.  As it is... George A Romero was making better (and more scary!) zombie films with a fraction of the budget fifty years ago in black and white.  Probably best to stick to those (or one of the earlier seasons of 'The Walking Dead').

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back