Army of the Dead was a subliminal message to the movie industry

Snyder was flexing his influence. (Image courtesy of imdb.com)

It's no secret that we have a deep respect for the Church of Snyder, and being a devout worshipper of his art ourselves, we spread his influence whenever we can. Each night before bed, we get down on our knees, clasp our fingers together and recite the holy scripture; "Zack Snyder, who art in Pasadena, hallowed be thy name..." and seek forgiveness for the sins committed unto him by Warner Bros and the Nolan-verse fanboys and girls that know not what they speak of when Batman v Superman wasn't widely accepted in the cinemas. 

However, Army of the Dead left us conflicted; whether we give an honest review of the movie or we falsely stand behind our lord and saviour and defend his creative defecation. After much consideration, we decided to do both and try to understand the subliminal, subtle messages he hid and clumsily adapted into his latest gospel. 

What happens in Vegas, is quarantined in Vegas. (Image courtesy of nj.com)

The movie starts out with a military convoy transporting a steel box out of Area 51 in Nevada. There's a bit of banter between the guards, and a shot of a newly wedded couple just leaving Las Vegas. While driving down Nevada's desert roads, the military convoy crashes into the newly weds and the steel box becomes compromised, unleashing a very fast, very angry and highly intelligent zombie soldier (you can see the dog tags around its neck).

The zombie absolutely wrecks the guards and infects two other soldiers that were part of the convoy who then, along with their sire, set their sights on the city of Las Vegas. 

The opening credit montage takes you through the initial zombie infections, destructions and introduces the surviving characters. 

The actual movie plot begins with a wealthy Japanese businessman played by Hiroyuki Sanada, offering Scott, one of the survivors of the Las Vegas zombie massacre and played by Dave Bautista, a very specific task; gather a team, go back into Las Vegas and retrieve his money. 

There are a bunch of different plots throughout the movie including Scott and his estranged daughter, life in the World Health Organization (WHO) quarantine zone, the coyote, some WHO refugees, Bly Tanaka's head of security and the zombie hierarchy, but the main storyline is just Scott and his team getting into Las Vegas, which is now a quarantine zone, and retrieving the cash. 

Apparently, the only things left after the zombie apocalypse are steroids and protein shakes. (Image courtesy of cnn.com)

We won't spoil the movie, but it's pretty straight forward with a bunch of back stabbing added in to extend the drama. However, what we can say is that, it's a very different Zack Snyder movie. Don't expect it to be as dark as 300 or as literal as Dawn of the Dead. It's also not as intelligent as The Watchmen or as thoroughly adapted as Justice League: The Snyder Cut. 

It's a whole different Snyder experience. 

What we liked about this movie is the intelligence and hierarchy of the zombies. There was a lot of effort put into the zombie designs and overall organisation system in the zombie community. As Lily dramatically put it, "it's not their prison, it's their kingdom". 

Also, there were a few lores that had been fleshed out further for this movie and the zombie designs were fabulous. Although, after World War Z, the zombie designs have effectively been streamlined to reflect Mark Forster's adaptation and now it seems that every zombie movie follows Forster's vision. 

As always, in every Snyder movie, the soundtrack plays a big role and we stand firm that for Army of the Dead, the soundtrack was particularly good. 

What we didn't like about the movie included the opening credit fonts which could've been done better, the constant stupid decisions made by every human in this movie and the saturation which clearly deviated from Snyder's original movie-making trademark. There was also no explanation of Area 51 and what type of zombie they were transporting because we know these aren't normal zombies since they have a splash of blue in their eyes when they die and the script was also something that could've been improved.

Did they have an ammo truck parked out front with an unlimited supply of bullets for every gun they carried? (Image courtesy of whattowatch.com)

After this movie came out, we watched it three times back-to-back. Once, to enjoy it with little expectations, the second time to analyse the script, flow and storyline and the third to just understand it from a philosophical standpoint. 

The third time watching it, we came to the conclusion that either Snyder was tired of pandering to public expectations and just wanted to do a fun little project or he had subliminal messages hidden EVERYWHERE in this movie. 

If we were to take the first conclusion and roll with it, Army of the Dead was a nice little action horror movie with a medium-to-high rewatch value and ended with a nice set up for a sequel. 

However, as devotees to the Church of Snyder, we couldn't help but dissect and analyse the entire movie and conclude that Army of the Dead was a subtle little hate mail/love letter to big-budget movie studios, Americans and leaders of the free world. 

From start to finish, the storyline was just littered with bad decisions that were illogical and too emotional to be considered intelligent. This is not how Snyder writes his characters. We surmised it to be a reflection of how humans, specifically Americans, would behave in a zombie apocalypse. There's also never a sense of urgency in the movie and a lot of monologuing.

Additionally, there's also a hint at how American leaders would act when confronted with a world-ending scenario and it was funny to see the impatience and comical logic connected to the scene. 

There's also a scene where the zombie tiger, Valentine, began absolutely mauling one of the characters, and I think that's what Snyder imagined he'd do to Warner Bros. execs if he had the chance. 

The end scene, we assume, was also a proverbial love letter to his daughter, Autumn; he'd let the world burn, if it meant only she and her sisters were left alive.

Army of the Dead is just years and years of Snyder's anger, disappointment and resentment at everything that had happened in his and his family's lives during the whole Justice League fiasco that was compressed into one movie. Was it a good movie? Sure. Could it have been better? Exponentially. But who are we to question the motives of our lord and saviour, Zack Snyder.

Luck be a lady tonight. (Image courtesy of indiewire.com)

All in all, Army of the Dead had Dead Island/Saints Row vibes throughout the movie and we appreciated Zack Snyder's efforts to return to the movie industry with passion projects instead of studio requests. 

Asian Does Horror gives Army of the Dead 👻👻👻 ghost emojis out of five.