Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2021)

Corporate, soulless, risible (gee, guess which Cranberries song scores the climactic scene), Army of the Dead drains all life from the viewer as it sediments into a clockwork narrative structure. Snyder has inserted some nifty variations on the zombie theme; the undead here hibernate and have formed into different classes. There's even a zombie tiger! But all that charity is nulled by the dreariest variation imaginable - these zombies can reproduce and thus, Snyder saps our attention with a central heterosexual  couple and a family drama to mirror those in the human story. Which latter, by the way, has all the rhythmic propulsion of a zombie dragging its semi-detached leg. Army of the Dead is seven deadening minutes longer than the Cannes cut of Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) not to mention 48 minutes longer than Snyder's 2004 remake of same which remains far and away his best film (although somehow I missed 2010's Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole). I do too want mainstream Hollywood cinema. I just want it to (handclap) tell (handclap) different (handclap) stories. Tighter ones too. 

Grade: a charitable D