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.
Army of the Dead: Meet the Actors Under All That King and Queen Zombie Makeup
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Zack Snyder s
Army of the Dead isn t your average zombie movie. The zombies that reside in Snyder s apocalyptic Las Vegas are fast-paced, intelligent, and organized, presenting a lethal threat of the utmost degree. There s a bonkers Elvis Presley impersonator and an undead tiger, and the whole flesh-eating bunch is led by zombie king Zeus (played by Rich Cetrone) and zombie alpha Queen (played by Athena Perample). These zombies have some semblance of human intelligence and are hell-bent on keeping other species from invading their community. Much like animals and humans, they have a social hierarchy among their kind, with the leaders communicating with their kingdom in sentient ways. To bring these alpha roles to life, Snyder appointed seasoned stunt professionals.
Fresh off of premiering “The Snyder Cut” of “Justice League” on HBO Max, Snyder is co-writer, director, producer and cinematographer on “Army of the Dead” (streaming Friday on Netflix). The action thriller centers on a crew of mercenaries (headlined by Dave Bautista) who venture into a quarantined Las Vegas following an undead apocalypse to steal $200 million from an abandoned casino vault.
Well, abandoned in the human sense at least – the denizens of Sin City now include a man-eating horde led by alpha zombies who are fast, smart and organized into a hierarchy.
This undead evolution refreshes the zombie horror subgenre after 10 seasons of TV’s “The Walking Dead.”