Army of The Dead‘s Most Disturbing Zombie Is Also Its Most Tragic

Though there are no in - universe connection between the worlds ofZack Snyder ’s Army of the Deadand the director’sDawn of the Deadfrom 2004 , one of the Netflix zombie picture ’s more interesting plot points finger like a purposeful callback to the earlier motion-picture show ’s most disturbing panorama .

before long afterArmy of the Dead ’s hired gunsventure into a zombi - infest Las Vegas , the group receives a smash course in how the undead behave in the recently cordoned - off metropolis . While Vegas is teeming with the sorts of mindless , flesh - hungry zombies everyone ’s somewhat familiar with ( but also azombified Panthera tigris ) , the real danger lurking in the urban center is the markedly intelligent zombies like the Alpha Queen ( Athena Perample ) and her virile counterpart Zeus ( Richard Cetrone ) , who are able to make more of and statement zombies like them . By offer up a living ( though morally corrupted ) human as a ritual killing when they make it at the zombies ’ city , the humans convince the Alpha Queen to permit them enter her domain with the understanding that if they overstep their badly - define boundaries , the zombies wo n’t hesitate to attack . In possibility , this should all work to make the man ’ journey to an abandoned casino that much childlike , but as tends to be the case in zombie pic , it is n’t long before someone does something stupid to mess the plan up .

For the most part , Snyder ’s zombi spirit keep their length from the humans , presumably planning to assault them when the metre is ripe . The human race adopt the zombi spirit mean to eat on them , and hatch a program designed to tempt the Queen into a vulnerable view do it possible to vote down her and , hopefully , affright the rest of the zombies off . But after the human race successfully manage to behead her , and one of them bags her still - alert head for safekeeping , things quickly sprain south as the infected alert Zeus to what ’s happened .

The Queen and Zeus sharing a tender moment.

The Queen and Zeus sharing a tender moment.Screenshot: Netflix

After reach you a few fleeting glimpse at the zombie beau monde early on , Army of the Dead does n’t actually tell you all that much about what the zombies have been up to since overtaking Las Vegas , and humanity does n’t seem to have been particularly concern . The military ’s plan to drop a nuclear bomb on the metropolis make sense as a means of dealing with the general threat of a larger irruption , but had more people been paying attention to the zombies ’ strange behavior , they might have had a better understanding of just how potentially dangerous beings like Zeus and the Queen were . When an enraged Zeus discover the Queen ’s physical structure , it ’s exonerated that the transgression ’s going to congeal him on a warpath against the humans that he was n’t necessarily on before . Before the zombies go hunt for their quarry , though , Zeus hold the Queen ’s dead body back to the stead where he creates overbold zombies , and once there he proceeds todeliver an unborn childfrom his married person ’s corpse , whose Department of State of being is one of the more interesting questions Army of the bushed leaves unanswered .

In most zombie spirit flick , a ghoul ’s body block being much of a menace once separated from the heading , which remains rattling if no wrong has been done to the brain . Army of the Dead does n’t really establish how much time return between when Zeus first presses his headland against the Queen ’s lifeless stomach and when he bear their child . But when he first cradles the baby in his palms , it emanates a bright blue glow that a number of the other intelligent zombie also have . When the baby ’s glow fades to back , and Zeus ’ screams become mournful , it ’s clear that the babe did n’t survive — but the fact that it was still cling to a spark of life within the Queen is interesting in and of itself , because of what it might imply about how the moving-picture show ’s zombies officiate .

There ’s a certain degree of thematic mirroring between Zeus ’ heartache over the going of his spouse and child and demode - mercenary Scott Ward ’s ( Dave Baustista ) own kinfolk government issue , but by not explain how Zeus and the Queen came to be a couple and what their plan for their apparently “ alert ” youngster was , the movie make its zombies ’ interior survive that much more interesting .

Graphic: Jim Cooke

The Queen sizing up her prey.Screenshot: Netflix

A monstrous zombi babe is similarly featured in Snyder ’s Dawn of the Dead . In that photographic film , a human valet is pressure to cumber his zombified , pregnant wife to a bedpost and deliver their undead baby by himself . Both Dawn of the Dead and Army of the Dead play their menage - focused zombie moments for a special kind of horrific tragedy meant to tug at your heartstrings even as it repulses you . While fierce zombi children are n’t unexampled in the genre , zombi babies have n’t boast largely on the cock-a-hoop screen outside of picture show like Peter Jackson ’s 1992 comedy Braindead and Nick Lyons ’ Rise of the Zombies from 2012 , both of which treated their monstrous baby as gags . Army of the Dead ’s babe does n’t cease up encounter an active role in the floor , but the way Zeus ’ mourning galvanizes his legion to cut through down the Queen ’s killers feels somewhat resonant with M.R. Carey’sThe missy With All the Gifts . In both the novel andColm McCarthy ’s cinematic adaption , child infect with the pathogen creditworthy for the “ zombie ” pestis play a pivotal purpose in determining the world ’s future , and looked at through a sure lens , there ’s a somewhat similar thought present , though undiscovered , in Army of the Dead .

Now that Snyder ’s tapped into this idea of zombified tyke in multiple picture show , it ’s easy enough to see how the idea can function to make these stories more emotionally complex . Army of the Dead ’s ending leaves start the theory for enough more exploration of this world as it teeters on the threshold of an all - out zombie apocalypse , and there ’s already aprequel film and an gum anime seriesin the works . Overexposed as zombies have been for the past decade or so , Snyder ’s zombi - verse is get going to have to put in the work to make itself remain firm out from its peers . If these tale lean into more of this kind of ghoulishness , the unexampled dealership might just pull that off .

Army of the Dead is now streaming on Netflix .

The Queen sizing up her prey.