Army of the Dead is the marriage of so many inspirations, calling it an original film would be dubious. It’s a zombie action Vegas heist film that borrows ideas from other flicks like I am Legend (or, perhaps, Land of the Dead), 28 Days Later, and Peninsula (aka Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula) at the bare minimum. In fact, it’s got the same basic premise as Peninsula… though the details are expanded and, frankly, it’s a much better film.

After a zombie outbreak leaves the city of Las Vegas walled off and abandoned to the hordes, the survivors are themselves quarantined or otherwise living unfulfilling lives. A very rich man tasks one of the surviving soldiers (Dave Bautista) to form a team and go back in to retrieve hundreds of millions of dollars from a casino before the city is nuked by the president. On the 4th of July.

This is a Zack Snyder film though it avoids many of his stylistic choices…. and that’s a compliment. It isn’t a saturated-to-the-point-of-monochrome… and while there is a certain use of slow-mo, it isn’t as aggressive as many of his films. And it has a bit of an emotional beating heart in between the stereotypical heist members and hero moments… and a lot of that is delivered by Dave Bautista. Someone let him off the leash and he delivers an actually moving performance in between the zombie splattering. It’s not Terms of Endearment but at least it’s more than I expected.

And the action scenes… this is certainly more an action film than any kind of horror… are pretty good. Maybe not as visually iconic like Snyder usually goes for… but certainly good enough and reasonably exciting. Also very, very gory… what with the exploding, imploding, crushing zombie effects. You might say sometimes it goes over the top… and I’m all for it.

This is hardly the best zombie movie out there but it is a pretty good one running on a pretty big budget. That doesn’t happen often so its nice to see the genre get a bigger scope than usual. And it’s kind of fun to see Las Vegas get the works… with an opening montage of the fall of the city that looked even more entertaining than the heist flick we actually got.

Probably the movie doesn’t need to be 2 1/2 hours long… the setup might take a little long, it might sag a little in the middle, and there’s a few more subplots than necessary. In that respect, Snyder is working to form. But a little muddled pacing doesn’t hurt the overall movie… it still cooks along with interesting visuals and action.

So, yeah, this is a pretty good time at the zombie home cinema. This isn’t going to change everything and I doubt it’ll be anyone’s favorite going forward, but it’s capable, it’s reasonably exciting, it’s got the gore and effects, and it even takes a few minutes to have some heart.

Score: 81