BEFORE: A programming note today before I begin, I said I would be catching up a few franchises this October, and some of them I've seen before - I've got one more "Purge" movie to watch and (currently) two "Scream" movies, unless they release another one in the next two weeks, then I'll have three. The new "Godzilla v. Kong" and the new "Ghostbusters" also made the cut this year, as you've probably guessed from my links, if you've got nothing better to do than figure out my chain. (Really, come on, get a life, would you?)
Today's movie, "Army of the Dead", is part of a two-movie chain, along with "Army of Thieves", and I will be watching both movies this week HOWEVER it will not be back-to-back. Oh, I tried, I took the films on my list and I tried VERY hard to put the two films next to each other, but there simply was no way to do it without leaving something out and I WILL NOT leave another film out, we're clearing house here at the Movie Year. So they're both in, for the necessary nature of being inclusive, there's just going to be one film in-between. Was going to be two, but I'm dropping "Dune: Part Two", because it's sci-fi and not Halloweeny enough. Hopefully I will watch that in January, along with "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga".
Now, the question becomes, which order to watch them in? "Army of Thieves" is the prequel to "Army of the Dead", however it was released a few months later, so do I preserve the order of the release dates, or watch the story in chronological order? It's a tough call, harder even then figuring out which order to show "Star Wars" films to your kids in. By release date, or by film chronology? I mean, do you start with Episode IV, which came into the world first, or start them with Episode I, so they know the backstory first, a luxury we old people did NOT have in the 1970's and 80's. One correct answer is "Do whatever you want" but an even more correct answer is to go by release date, so the saga's secrets will be revealed to you the way the Creator intended. (and I mean George Lucas, not God, well, OK, maybe they're kind of the same thing)
Once I made the October chain, I had an option to either start with "We Have a Ghost" and end with "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" OR flip the chain, just reverse it back to front. One order would put "Army of the Dead" first, and the other would put "Army of Thieves" first. I can't really LOSE here, but the linking to September films and November films kind of dictated that I open with "We Have a Ghost" and this would put "Army of the Dead" ahead of it's prequel. It's fine, the film with the earlier release date therefore comes first, it's what nature intended, and Lucas is in his heaven and all's right with the world, except there are zombies running around in it.
Tig Notaro carries over from "We Have a Ghost".
THE PLOT: Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
AFTER: Over these last few years, I've become an "expert" in so many things - boxing movies, rom-coms and yeah, zombie movies. Not the really scary ones like "Night of the Living Dead" and "Evil Dead", at least not yet - but I would like to get to all the outstanding Bruce Campbell movies one of these years. No, I mean films like "The Dead Don't Die" and "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse", you know, the fun ones. Also "World War Z" and "Zombieland" and probably a few others I've forgotten about.
But I'm an "expert" on so many other things, like contemporary lounge music, and the Marvel multiverse (which I had to explain to an older gentleman who left a screening of "Across the Spider-Verse" in a confused state, it turned out he hadn't read a Marvel comic since the 1970's and Peter Parker was the only Spider-Man he'd ever known) and also, I know some things about disability insurance is calculated, but I'm taking those secrets with me to the grave. I also like to stay on top of current trends, and one that I've noticed lately is movies, and TV shows using cover versions of rock songs that are slowed WAY down and performed in a very creepy style. The recent season of the HBO show "True Detective" did this with the song "Twist and Shout", and once you hear that, you will never, never be able to hear that song, even the Beatles version, without a chill running down your spine. There's also a commercial airing now for KerryGold butter (!) that shows a kitchen table on city streets and dark alleys while a slowed-down, super-creepy version of Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" plays over the footage. Watch that ad online and tell me that kitchen table hasn't killed at least three people.
Which brings me to the opening credits of "Army of the Dead", possibly the most spectacular, horrible and glorious ten minutes I've seen in the opening of ANY movie. Not the opening story, which details how the zombie plague got loose from containment in the desert outside Las Vegas, but the CREDITS, which show the plague spreading over the Strip and zombies taking over the city, while characters we don't even know yet are trying in vain to stem the zombie tide. The music is a slowed-down, creepified cover of "Viva Las Vegas", performed by my favorite lounge lizard, Richard Cheese (and his band, Lounge Against the Machine). Richard is also an expert in making tracks for zombie movies, because his cover of "Down with the Sickness" was featured in the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead", also directed by Zack Snyder. Well, he found his niche, for sure.
There's complete anarchy, head-shots, people being bitten by zombies, zombies being torn apart, there are bullets timed to the music, or maybe it's the other way around, we don't know who these heroes are who are fighting the zombie horde, yet at the same time we're learning all we need to know of their backstory, and this all may be important later, we're not sure. And meanwhile, Richard Cheese is singing about blackjack, power and the roulette wheel, fortunea being won and lost on every deal. Good god, I was drawn in, I don't want to watch this movie again, but I'l watch these credits again as many times as necessary to commit it to memory.
There are topless zombie showgirls attacking a man in a hotel hot tub. There are gamblers winning jackpots on slot machines (the coins don't come falling out any more, sorry, but whatever) only to get eaten by a zombie bachelorette party. There are Air Force planes carpet-bombing the city, and Elvis zombies being crushed by the falling Eiffel Tower from the Paris Hotel & Casino. Paratroopers landing next to the Statue of Liberty next to New York, New York who then get swallowed up by the zombie tourists. Finally the military builds a wall around the city from shipping containers, and a look inside shows nothing but zombies as far as the eye can see, with the entire Vegas Strip in ruins. How could the movie that follows these masterful credits POSSIBLY live up to them?
Well, it can't - the bar was just set too high, I think. Like imagine if a baseball team scored 87 runs in the bottom of the first inning, and then everyone still has to sit there for the whole game, but come on, the most exciting bit is over, you can probably leave during the second inning and be fairly sure you caught all the action. WELL, I stuck around, thinking the movie might be as entertaining as those credits, but no such luck. Really, it was all downhill from there. What's the lesson, make your credits boring so your film seems more exciting? Nah, but I do think it was a mistake to have the most action, the best editing and the best pacing all there in the first 15 minutes.
The rest plays out like some weird combination of "Ocean's Eleven" meets "World War Z", although that description sounds a lot more exciting than what ends up happening. Scott Ward is contacted by a casino owner, who claims that there's a large amount of money in his basement vault on the strip, and he wants Ward to put a crew together to get it. With a safe-cracker, a helicopter pilot and a few people who are experts at shooting zombies, it just might be possible, but of course dangerous. And there's a time limit, because in four days the government's going to drop a low-level nuke on Vegas to obliterate any zombies remaining within the walled city. If they can smuggle themselves into the city, get to the vault and reclaim $200 million, they can keep $50 million for themselves and divide it however they want among the team.
Ward recruits his former mercenary teammates from the time of the initial zombie attack and decides to go for it, because he's tired of flipping burgers out in the desert, so I guess even death by zombie is better than that. He also reunites with his daughter who works at one of the camps near the quarantine zone, and she knows a coyote who can get them in - and there's supposedly a helicopter on the roof of the casino, they just need to bring the pilot to get them out. And they have the world's best safecracker and some zombie sharpshooters, so (come on say it with me...) what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
They learn that there's a limited number of zombies left in Vegas (one presumes that at some point, maybe half of the zombies died because their food supply ran out, at that point do they just eat each other?) and most of them are the dumb ones, the "shamblers" who just roam around looking for brains to eat, but some zombies have evolved into Alphas, which seem to be semi-intelligent - like, they can play roulette but they're not great at blackjack or craps - and they also have a male leader and a queen, too. Also there's a zombie white tiger roaming around, and I can probably tell you which famous pair of magicians probably owned the zoo he came from.
But the team (well, most of them, anyway) makes it to the vault and sets about cracking the safe and planning their route to the helicopter. Everything seems to be going well, and they should be fine unless the government suddenly decides to change the schedule and move up the bombing by 24 hours. OK, so they may be in a little trouble there, and wouldn't you know it, some of the zombies might be a little mad that someone took their Queen's head off. OK, a few complications, we can get through this, we'll be fine as long as Ward's daughter doesn't wander off on her own for some reason looking for her friend who came into the city a few days before...
This film keeps insisting on setting up its problems as solvable, then constantly throwing more and more obstacles into the mix to make the unlikely impossible. Really, I get the formula of it always being darkest before the dawn, but I thought we had an understanding that no matter how hard the problem, eventually the good guys will prevail and defeat the evil power. Well, maybe somebody didn't get the memo about that, or maybe it's just not that kind of movie. Horror movies may be run a bit differently, after all, and if things seem darkest before the dawn, just wait because they're about to get even darker after. Or something like that.
This is also the film that was forced to replace an entire actor's performance, once comedian Chris D'Elia was hit with sexual misconduct allegations. He filmed all of his scenes as the helicopter pilot, then had to be removed digitally from every shot and replaced with Tig Notaro, who shot her scenes against a green-screen. And it only cost a few million to do this - but it's only in the last 10 years that special effects technology has made things like this possible at all.
This was also the first Netflix film to get a wide release in movie theaters, before it was available on the streaming platform. Yeah, so the movie's a bit of a bust, but the opening credits are phenomenal, and this film (and its prequel) are both four years old now, so that means a couple of Octobers have gone by without me being able to link to this. Really, it feels good to cross this one off the list, if for no other reason than it was really difficult to get here.
Also starring Dave Bautista (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Ella Purnell (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Omari Hardwick (last seen in "The Mother"), Ana de la Reguera (last seen in "Nacho Libre"), Theo Rossi (last seen in "Cloverfield"), Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Nora Arnezeder (last seen in "The Words"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Garret Dillahunt (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Raul Castillo (last seen in "Hustle"), Huma Qureshi, Samantha Win (last seen in "Justice League"), Richard Cetrone (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Danielle Burgio (ditto), Michael Cassidy (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Steve Corona (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Chelsea Edmundson, Zach Rose, Brian Avery, David K. Maiocco, Ryan Watson (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Sabine Varnes, Monica Lopez, Kelly Phelan, James M. Halty, Leon Budrow, Maeve Garay (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Colby Lemmo (ditto), Jess Harbeck, Wayne Dalglish, Ken Thong, Donna Brazile, Sean Spicer (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Sheila Awasthi, Sebastian Balchand, Marisilda Garcia, Isachar Benitez, Antonio Leyba (last seen in "The Marksman"), Colin Jones (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Athena Perample, Albert Valladares, Sarah Minnich (last seen in "Vengeance"),
RATING: 6 out of 10 mysterious skeletons (Hmmmm....)
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