2021 is going to go down in the history books as the year of the Zack Snyder streaming exclusive, with the filmmaker delivering two huge blockbusters within a couple of months of each other. Obviously, most of the attention is currently focused on Justice League, but the first Army of the Dead trailer has now arrived to remind audiences that there’s an action-packed zombie thriller coming to Netflix in May.
A team of elite thieves and mercenaries robbing a casino in the midst of a Las Vegas zombie outbreak that originated in Area 51 is the sort of B-tier concept on an A-list budget that promises to do exactly what it says on the tin. Dave Bautista is a reliable leading man that’s a much better actor than his hulking frame would suggest, but nobody’s adding Army of the Dead to their watch list for the performances.
Indeed, the footage makes it look very much like a Zack Snyder movie for better or worse, as it’s packed with all of the visual flourishes that have come to define his output over the last seventeen years. Not to mention that he ironically made his feature debut with zombie remake Dawn of the Dead, so his latest effort is bringing things full circle to some extent.
Army of the Dead is just the second of Snyder’s nine films that isn’t based on a pre-existing property, and the last time he gave us something 100% original, the end result was the dire Sucker Punch. Of course, he’s a decade older and wiser, not to mention vastly more experienced, so hopefully the balls to the wall undead action heist thriller lives up to the undoubted potential shown in the first footage.
