During the opening credits of Zack Snyder’s
Army of the Dead, you can nearly feel the director’s giddy smile stretching across the hedonistic melee. In Las Vegas, flesh-eating zombies are beginning to outnumber the casinos. And they’re consuming unsuspecting tourists just as quickly. Cannibalistic showgirls prowl for prey. Slot-machine junkies bundling up their remaining pittance dodge the newly infected. A dimwitted Elvis impersonator, wig askew, looks blankly over the carnage as Richard Cheese’s elegiac cover of “Viva Las Vegas” soundtracks the zany bloodshed. It’s the rare instance where a film’s climax occurs in the first few minutes.