With the zombie craze of the 2010s having come to a disappointing end after the market was oversaturated to the extreme with mediocre-to-awful cash-ins and each successive season of The Walking Dead experiencing a steady decline in quality to the point where I just eventually lost interest, it's been tough to be a fan of the undead recently as there is currently a noticeable lack of any exciting new content in this area. So naturally when I heard Zack Snyder was making a kind of, sort of, but not really follow-up to his excellent directorial debut (2004's Dawn of the Dead) I was intrigued. After all, who better to reanimate the corpse of what was once everybody's favorite brand of horror than the man responsible for what is likely the only good remake of an entry in Romero's defining trilogy and easily one of the best zombie flicks of all time? Unfortunately, Army of the Dead is not the resurrection agent I was looking for, offering up some decent brain splattering action, but little else to get excited about. To be fair, when it's being a straight zombie movie it's actually pretty good. The gore is delightfully over-the-top, the heist premise is legitimately kind of cool, and it even provides some nice twists on these classic monsters. The concept of "smart zombies" is one I've never been able to get behind before, as even George Romero himself couldn't make the higher-functioning undead come off as anything more than just plain goofy when he tried his hand at it back in 2005 with Land of the Dead. Snyder's attempt at giving these rotting creatures some intelligence however, shockingly makes them a bit more menacing and leads to a few unique and inventive scenarios before he inevitably takes things too far. The problem? It takes roughly an hour to get to any of this stuff. The first half of Army is bogged down with needlessly convoluted exposition and introductions to characters we are never able to care about (except Dieter) because they are either underdeveloped, get next to no screentime, or are flat out unlikeable. Then there's the final act where Snyder straight up jumps the shark in a myriad of ways, making it clear he doesn't know how things like, for example, the aftermath of a nuclear strike work. Or maybe he does and that was a part where I was supposed to turn my brain off and simply enjoy the ride. It's never clear just how seriously Snyder wants us to take all of this due to the weird amalgam of tones on display. There are elements of B-movie cheese and absurdity juxtaposed with solemn character drama and harsh acts meant to convey socio-political messages. Like Batman v Superman and the director's other more grand projects, it's a mess of ideas that never fully come together in the most satisfying of ways. Only this time imbued with the exuberance of 12 year old rather than the grimdark edginess of a moody teen found in his superhero works. If you just want to see decaying heads explode in a mess of blood and brains, Army can certainly provide that in a mostly entertaining fashion. However, despite Snyder's knack for creating fun action sequences the faults with things like the writing, tone, and maybe even the vision itself keep the film from being anything more than a watchable letdown. I've certainly killed two-and-a-half hours in worse ways before, but I've still been left with a craving for a better zombie movie. One with the potential to revive the infected hordes and our passion for them once again.