Tropes Of The Dead

Question : Do I do a review with or without spoilers?

To be honest, even if I tried to do a no spoiler review I’d add something in to ruin it but ultimately this is a zombie movie and despite its differences to many other movies of the same genre it still has a cornucopia of zombie movie tropes so you know what you're getting right???.

The plot is pretty straight forward and you see it all in the trailer – a group of people led by Bautista’s Scott Ward go back into a zombie-infested Las Vegas to open up a vault containing $200 million dollars and to bring it all back to corrupt billionaire Bly Tanaka for a cut of the money. Of course it’s never that simple because if it was then the movie would be a lot shorter than 2h 28 minutes. Oh, and there’s a zombie tiger.

The start of the movie sets up the zombie takeover of Vegas and the consequential rescue missions of Bautista and his crew as they try to save as many uninfected as possible before the walls (shipping containers) drop and isolate Las Vegas. These are the scenes you see the most during the trailer, action packed, no dialogue at all and a quick introduction to some of Bautista’s crew all to the tune of Viva Las Vegas. No punches are held here, we’re looking at a potential over the top gore fest throughout and I’d expect nothing less.

There’s also a side quest involving his estranged daughter who has ‘issues’ and feels the need to go back into Vegas to rescue an idiotic friend who thought they’d last more than 5 minutes in the zombie-infested wasteland. To be honest, I didn’t give a crap about her nor her friend but you always need a spanner in the works and she was one of two. The second spanner I’ll mention later.

Bautista’s crew are a likeable lot and I was thankful there wasn’t too much unnecessary fleshing out of the characters – we know most are probably going to die anyway. The only fleshing out was father and daughter issues which as I’ve said, I didn’t care about.

The addition of Tig Notaro at the last minute (digitally inserted as the original actor D’Elia faced sexual misconduct accusations) apparently cost Zack Snyder millions but it definitely paid off. I really like her in Discovery and she’s just as good and dry witted here.

Okay, I lied, not all of the crew are likable but one was added by Tanaka himself to oversee the operation – he is spanner number 2 and his name is Michael. What’s a zombie heist movie without a predictable double cross eh? Before you say anything, I’m not complaining about its predictability, I expect it – I’m watching Army of the Dead, not The Shawshank Redemption.

Without spoiling too much I’ll say this, the plot was decent, if predictable. The ‘twists’ you could see a mile off, characters making bad decisions and time always flows differently in movies doesn’t it. People can save the world in 5 minutes in a movie whereas it takes me that long to get out of my seat. I really don’t want to go to more into much of the storyline but there’s something we really need to talk about……Intelligent zombies.

The concept of an intelligent zombie is not new; it was seen in Day of the Dead with Bub and expanded on in Land of the Dead. In this movie, we appear to have a bit of a zombie hierarchy. The Alpha Elite Zombie who caused all this is intelligent – he can even ride a horse and realises the importance of a helmet. Whoever he bites becomes an intelligent ‘standard alpha’ zombie and a zombie society is formed, he even has a ‘Queen’. Not only are these zombie intelligent, they communicate via screams and calls and like the World War Z and ‘28 days later’ zombies, they’re pretty athletic. We also have the good old dumb ‘shamblers’ they’re as a result of the standard alpha zombies or other shamblers biting you. (I think that’s how it works)

I’ve no problem with fast, intelligent zombies. It’s not ground breaking and it makes for a good action movie. I am old school though and find the slow, en masse zombies more terrifying. What I also used to find more terrifying was the special effects. A computer generated zombie tiger may be impressive but the close up visceral tearing of a person limb from limb by a group of the undead is far more unsettling and was done far better in the ‘good old days’. That’s why I liked the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series so much as they went back to physical special effects and relied very little on computer generated stuff. Snyder does use some physical effects but it’s still not like the zombies movies of decades past (jeez that comment made me feel old).

I’d be lying if I didn’t say another draw of this movie was it’s setting of Vegas. I was intrigued to see how it would be shown and I was pleasantly surprised to see they’d actually put in the ruins of real Vegas casinos such as Luxor, New York New York and Mandalay Bay. The majority of the casino interiors were filmed in Atlantic City in a couple of closed down casinos. They were going to use Circus Circus but Snyder didn’t think people would believe that level of ruin and dilapidation (I joke – I actually genuinely like Circus Circus). The main casino in the film The Olympus is totally made up but with the Elite Alpha Zombie being named Zeus who looks down upon Vegas from the heights of Olympus it’s all very mythologically Greek and come to think of it he also rides a horse (Pegasus with no wings?)

Whilst watching the film I thought, ‘this is nothing like I’ve seen before but it’s also like everything I’ve seen before’. It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie, a lot of my friends have said how much fun it was and that’s exactly what it is – fun and a lot of crazy. A friend of mine did say he felt as though we’re reaching zombie media critical mass. There’s countless movies, games, TV series and from this film alone I’ve read there’s going to be a spin off based on the safe-cracker character and an animated prequel.

I called this review Tropes Of The Dead and believe me when I say there are a lot of zombie movie tropes, you could easily play Zombie Trope Bingo. That’s not to say Snyder hasn’t tried to do some things differently, we’ve never seen zombies with social structure, we’ve not seen a zombie tiger (but we have seen a tiger in Walking Dead) nor have we seen a zombie couple before but we did see zombie love in Return Of The Living Dead 3. Another feeble attempt at avoiding spoilers, all I’ll say is there’s a scene that has some link to the Day of the Dead remake and in a slightly different way – Z Nation.

There are a few concepts that Snyder has put into the film but none of it is directly addressed. Is there an alien link? Why are there cyborg zombies? Are we actually watching the same timeline throughout the movie? Will there be a sequel? (Of course there will). Just a quick Google shows you there’s a lot in this movie you can easily miss.

The film is an auditory and visual feast with a decent soundtrack. It isn’t a sequel to his Dawn Of The Dead remake, nor is it a sequel of any of Romero’s ‘Of The Dead’ movies. It’s a standalone movie in a universe that Snyder wants to develop and evolve with prequels and sequels. Thanks to the positive reviews and the current buzz around it then I can see there’s definitely more to come and I’m looking forward to seeing what is around the corner – as long as it’s not Scott Ward’s (Bautista) daughter …yawn…

Watch it and you won’t be disappointed – unless you don’t like zombie movies and then like Jane just pay attention when the soundtrack kicks in with a song you know then lose interest again.

I give this movie 🧠 🧠 🧠 out of 5