Just watched Army of the Dead, the new zombie film from Zach Snyder and Netflix. Overall, it was a good albeit frustrating and flawed film. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2/3 of the film and was really disappointed at the amount of mistakes made in the final third which definitely brought it down for me.
Spoilers to follow
Pros:
-Great opening and exciting watchable film up until the final third
-Enjoyed the smart zombies and zombie hierarchy idea, changes it up from all the villains just being fodder
-Dave Batista is great as awful and by far the best actor in the film
-Generally very action
-Fantastic tension in some scenes, genuinely thought people were going to die as soon as the vault was opened
-Vanderohe is a pretty good character
Cons:
-the third act is mostly garbage
-The majority of the characters die meaningless death within a very short time frame, and the movie quickly goes from a fun group comedy thriller to a depressing and frustrating father-son movie
-generally could have used some better actors/more well known names. Most of the characters are well written and somewhat interesting, they just don't have fantastic acting to push it to the next level.
-It's almost unrealistic and annoying that pretty much anything that can go wrong, does. While an R-rated hard action zombie film will inevitably have some deaths, it's stupid how very nearly everyone dies.
-The stupid geeta subplot. Geeta was the one positive component of the film's outcome as she escaped. When she dies, the entire heist was just a massive failure as everyone on it died, and nothing positive would come from having done the heist
-Maria confessing her love for Batista was kind of stupid considering they both die without really resolving it
-Marianne is a little annoying, Kate is extremely annoying
-They literally wait at the helicopter for just enough time for the king zombie to get on board when they could have easily escaped
-The end is terrible as everyone, including Batista and excluding the most annoying characters, dies. There is no satisfaction or redemption and Tanaka just kind of gets away with it and there's no resolution there. Vanderohe's escape seems momentarily awesome as he's the best character, until it's reveal he's bitten and is about to wreak zombie havoc on Mexico City. Not sure why everyone turned into a zombie immediately but he seemed to wait a week
Overall a 7/10, absolutely could have been a 9/10 without a horrible ending and some better actors
