Movies
How the Weird West Was Won – A Look into the Strange World of Zack Snyder’s ‘Army of the Dead’
Remember when zombie movies were weird? No seriously. Think back to the era of movies before Night of the Living Dead existed and the zombie genre always swung for the fences with weird/wild concepts. It was no rare occurrence to have our favorite undead villains be the result of magic, supernatural, or science fiction causes. So imagine the surprise in 2021 when Zack Snyder released his long awaited, thought never to be released film Army of the Dead.
For years, Army of the Dead was stuck in a perpetual conceptual phase. Originally envisioned as a sequel to Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, the film never quite made it past these early concepts. Though not much is known about this sequel concept from 2007, it was described as a story about a father attempting to save his daughter in the backdrop of a zombie-infested Las Vegas. Concepts that would carry over into the finalized version released in 2021.
Right from the jump Army of the Dead subverts expectations. 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, for as good as it is, remains true to the foundations of the zombie genre laid down by the late George A. Romero. But from the beginning of Army of the Dead we see aliens hidden in the background and the crew regularly experiences deja vu, feeling like they’ve done this suicide mission before. Army of the Dead may be another zombie film, but it’s not your typical one.
At one point in the film the news talks about an outbreak happening In Milwaukee, the setting for Dawn of the Dead; though the two films are not actually set in the same universe. And numerous characters state they feel a sense of deja vu over the course of the film, and even eventually stumble across skeletal remains wearing similar clothing. Using these passing references and pieces of evidence I like to propose that not only are multiple universes at play but also the main characters seem to be caught in a time loop. Snyder’s film forgoes the popular post-Romero zombie clichés and embraces the science fiction and fantastical elements of zombie lore.
Did I mention aliens and robots?
Indeed, Army of the Dead seems to acknowledge the existence of aliens in its universe, bringing back the age old pre-Romero tradition of hinting at a sci-fi element as the catalyst for its zombie apocalypse. Proof of this is in the opening sequence. As the military convoy is leaving Area 51 we see two UFOs hit light speed in a blink and you’ll miss it moment. Where Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is a tribute to the everlasting power and influence of post-Romero undead, Army embraces the sub genre’s 40s/50s science fiction roots.
What follows post-outbreak (most likely alien caused) is a deconstruction of the western genre through the lens of a zombie film. Western films are notorious for their big loud setups. Here we follow mercenary for hire Scott Ward, as he is hired to pull off a $200 million heist in the nearby city of Las Vegas before it’s nuked to kingdom come, which leads him to put together a team. Using the typical western (even samurai) set up of recruiting a team to pull off an impossible task, along with the setting, essentially provides us a modern take on the “Weird West”. Which is typically a hybrid of the western genre with sci-fi, fantasy, or horror.
Eventually the team starts to think they’ve lived out the events of the heist and journey over and over. This may be a subtle cue to the audience that there is more at play than initially thought. Again, the crew eventually discovers corpses wearing clothing and jewelry similar to theirs. Personally I believe they’re caught in a time loop, forced to live the tragic events of the movie over and over with no end in sight for anyone involved. So while Army of the Dead may seem like your typical zombie film on the surface, there are many elements hidden in plain sight that not only position it as a modern Weird Western, but also a call back to the pre-Romero zombie era that we don’t see much of any more.
On October 29, 2021, Army of Thieves will be released. The film is being marketed as a romantic comedy spin off set in the early days of the outbreak, and stars Dieter from Army of the Dead as he’s hired to pull off a heist with another team. Following in the steps of Army of the Dead, Thieves looks to break the cycle/tradition of zombie films and be set in a world that still exists in normal day to day life with the zombie outbreak in full swing. It could be a promising spin on the genre and add to Army of the Dead’s legacy as a love letter to the genre’s roots while also pushing the sub-genre into new and unknown territories.
Editor’s Note: It was announced this week that Zack Snyder is working on a sequel to Army of the Dead for Netflix, which has now been officially titled Planet of the Dead.
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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