Army of the Dead
Netflix | Release Date: May 14, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
23
Negative:
2
Watch Now
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 24, 2021
Snyder’s new zombie entree The Army of the Dead is too scattershot, perhaps too derivative and definitely too long. But it’s definitely a movie, as well as a perfectly acceptable turn-your-brain-off entertainment. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMay 21, 2021
Freed from the pretensions of his DC projects and working with the Netflix charge card, Snyder has a ball proving that trash can triumph on the largest stage if played with elan and enthusiasm. Read full review
60
IGNRafael MotamayorMay 20, 2021
While it does some fascinating things with the zombie genre that we haven't seen since George A. Romero, Army of the Dead ends up bogged down by its own self-importance and forgets how fun it's supposed to be. Its promising opening credits sequence is so much better than the rest of the film. Read full review
60
Paste MagazineJim VorelMay 19, 2021
Snyder is trying to do so much here that the whole thing practically collapses under its own weight, a victim of its own attempt at bombast and visual iconoclasm. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 18, 2021
This is a good solid three star movie. Which is perhaps where Snyder should be anyway, away from the extremes of deification and vilification. When he’s not trying to be great, he can actually be quite good. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 11, 2021
For better or worse, it’s very much a Zack Snyder production: unwieldy but absorbing, awash in stilted dialogue, flimsy characters, bone-crunching violence, ridiculous-verging-on-sublime needle drops . . . and have-it-both-ways political subtext. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamMay 11, 2021
It's overlong and laboured in places, but worth a bite for the money-shot set-pieces. Plus... zombie tiger! Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 11, 2021
It has a pleasing brawn and sweep, and you get caught up in it. As meat-and-potatoes escapism, it’s good diner food served with extra ketchup. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 11, 2021
Whether Army of the Dead is any good isn’t really an issue. It’s more whether it sets out to do what Snyder intends for it to do. If he intended it to be an over-the-top exercise in zombie mayhem sprinkled with the occasional human emotion, he succeeded. The nice part is that this time he has actually managed to make it fun along the way. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentMay 11, 2021
Army Of The Dead is best when Snyder leans into the fun, and allows himself moments of pure silliness. When he aims for more emotional territory — like the rather trite guilt-to-redemption arc between Scott and his estranged daughter, played capably by Ella Purnell — we start to feel the weight of that running time. Read full review
60
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaMay 11, 2021
There’s a certain fun to be had in Army of the Dead, but it’s the mindless, ugly fun that you wake up the next day regretting. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like a trip to Las Vegas. Read full review
50
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiMay 21, 2021
When the massacre starts, the movie gets better. But the methods of murder are, like everything else, awfully self-serious and limited to mostly just plain old guns and knives. Read full review
50
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisMay 20, 2021
With its sticky pacing and divinely unsubtle soundtrack (though The Cranberries’ “Zombie” is always excusable), Army of the Dead is an ungainly, yet weirdly mesmeric lump of splatter-pop filmmaking. Read full review
50
The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsMay 13, 2021
You can sense Bautista making the best of Snyder’s father-daughter formula, but pacing feels off. And the script, which Snyder wrote with Joby Harold and Shay Hatten, settles into mechanical plotting that undercuts all the zany, pop energy that began its trajectory. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 11, 2021
The domestic drama, like the heist story line, fizzles out in the end. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsMay 11, 2021
Army of the Dead is neither the best of Snyder nor the worst. In whipping a bit of both extremes into a dependably watchable piece of pop froth that hits the appropriate marks, the movie strives for the expected relevance, offers the right amount of nonsurprise surprises, and distinguishes itself from the given rules of the genre just so that it, more or less, breaks even. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMay 11, 2021
It starts off great. But then it goes on. And on. And on. And takes itself ever more seriously at each turn. By the end, any buoyancy has disappeared into a familiar wasteland piled high with corpses and exploding heads. Read full review
45
CNNBrian LowryMay 13, 2021
While this might represent a diverting lark in its dizzying combination of movie conventions, this is another one of those instances where what happens in Vegas probably should stay there. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 11, 2021
Even if you like Snyder's non-superhero work, this feels like a serious step down. Read full review
40
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 11, 2021
The action here is visceral and slickly handled, especially in the kind of expository opening credits sequence that Snyder is a master of (see also: Watchmen), but the patter is perfunctory and there's little grab to hold onto in this cadre of underdeveloped expendables as they negotiate the Vegas Strip, hotel corridors and the odd dull family dispute. Aliens is also a showcase for the kind of cut-to-the-bone editing Army of the Dead could have really done with. The zombies are fast here; the pacing definitely isn’t. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 11, 2021
It’s no spoiler to report that not everyone in Army Of The Dead will make it out alive — what is surprising is how little you’ll care who does. Read full review
40
Screen RantMolly FreemanMay 11, 2021
Army of the Dead is by no means a must-watch zombie or heist movie, and folks uninterested in this film would be fine to skip it. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 11, 2021
It’s all just one monumental splatterfest, where the zombies’ army of the dead face off against people who aren’t very alive, and all basically without jokes. Read full review
More From This Movie

57 Critic Reviews

5.9 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
2 73 Creed III
3 67 Avatar: The Way of Water
4 63 Knock at the Cabin
5 62 Plane
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL