At a Q&A at the Paris Theater, after a screening of the new Netflix zombie hit, Army of the Dead, to air this weekend, director and D.P.—this is so his movie-- Zack Snyder said he was thinking about The Sheltering Sky and how a protagonist dies in the desert of some weird disease. In conversation with Grace Randolph, a comic book writer and YouTube star, and his producer/ wife Deb Snyder, he was invoking Paul Bowles’ midcentury novel and Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger as a married couple who go deeper into anonymity as they leave Western culture behind in the North African landscape. This reference is one of a zillion that makes the movie Army of the Dead so much fun to watch—including Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, a sly nod to the arid humor of doom.
What is it about deserts? In
Army of the Dead, the location is Las Vegas, but not the playland of one-armed bandits we associate with a city that lights up 24-hours/ day for black jack and roulette, and some outsized
Wayne Newton extravaganzas. After some cataclysmic event, the city is now walled off, a breeding ground for the dead who cannot die. In that god forsaken place, a fortune of money languishes in an underground safe, and a bunch of live people are hired to make the heist.
First let me say, this is a great group, and you really don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Second, and then again, zombies create a compelling conceit, especially if you cannot stomach the idea of death. And then again, the undead live, coated in dust and filth, and do not shower. They do not wear feathered fans over their privates, and probably smell very bad. Just part of their charm. Their leader seems to have a metal protective helmet for his most vulnerable place, no, not that place, but his brains, and you kind of wonder, is metal in short supply? Why isn’t his lady love similarly protected? You will be amazed at how riveting spurting blood from decapitation can be.
Admittedly, zombie movies are satire by definition, and a hoot, but this one goes genre smart.
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