In terms of its pure entertainment factor and nothing else, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead has to be viewed as one of the best zombie movies of the 21st Century. The filmmaker set out his stall as a visually driven director from the very start of his feature debut, delivering a string of splashy set pieces that whittled down the eclectic ensemble, working from a script written by James Gunn.
Things have now come full circle, and Snyder returns to the zombie genre with Netflix’s big budget Army of the Dead, which arrives on the platform in just over five weeks on May 21st. The high concept premise sees Dave Bautista lead a gang of elite mercenaries and thieves into Las Vegas during the middle of the zombie apocalypse to stage a daring heist on a casino, and that synopsis alone is pretty much all you need to know when making up your mind as to whether you’re on board or not.
It would be an understatement to say that Snyder is riding a wave of goodwill at the moment following HBO Max’s Justice League, and a combination of his loyal fanbase and the curiosity of seeing him return to zombie turf in his first non-DCEU effort in a decade is guaranteed to result in some serious viewing numbers for Army of the Dead.
There’s plenty of new footage on display in the latest trailer, too, and it looks very much like a Zack Snyder movie, no doubt for better and worse. A bonkers zombie heist action thriller with ties to Area 51 seems like an ill fit for the director’s typically somber aesthetic, but there’s plenty of fun to be had in Army of the Dead if the latest promo is anything to go by.