Army of the Dead 2021

Zack Snyder's return to basics directing is a fairly "paint by numbers" zombie action film. It takes it's cues more from "Escape from New York" and "Doomsday" rather than George Romero's zombie films,however- a group of ex-military are tasked with the opportunity to make in excess of several million dollars, tax free, if they can raid a Casino Vault the day before the government plans on dropping a nuke atop the zombie infested Las Vegas. When the group get there, they encounter far more than the shambling, mindless hordes that they fought before. 

Snyder's new zombies have developed into an savage and largely barbaric society, complete with a King and Queen to rule over the city of the dead. Communicating with one another through primitive growls, howls, grunts, and screams; the creatures have developed a hierarchical structure between "shamblers" and "Alpha" zombies, the latter of which were all bitten by Patient Zero (AKA: The King). 

Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) leads his rag tag team of ex-military and other criminal sorts into the Zombie City. Tagging along for the ride is his daughter, a volunteer with Las Vegas refugees looking for some of her people who tried to go back inside for that loose cash laying about the city. Their expectations soon go south and it isn't long until the zombies start to converge on our little group of would-be casino robbers. 

The nitty gritty is that this is a lot of gory action fun eye-candy and the social dynamic between the group is pretty good. Tig Notaro puts in an especially caustic performance as a snarky Helicopter Pilot. Dave Bautista is believable as a veteran struggling with the inability to communicate with the people around him due to his own feelings of guilt in having to put down his wife. The growing camaraderie between Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and the philosophical Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) is often entertaining to watch. Theo Rossi shows up as a despicable refugee camp guard, while Ella Purnell rounds out the cast as Scott's daughter, Kate Ward. 

A satisfying 8 out of 10, though don't expect it to be the "best thing evah!"- it's fun popcorn munching at it's best.

 

Psychoape! (2021)

 In the low to no budget tradition of "Gorilla" film-making, a bunch of film makers set out to follow a vision. Armed with a love for and admiration for the classic monkey horror films of yesteryear, a lot of puns, a bushel of bananas, and some fairly basic digital effects (A lot of splatter effects) the crew put some guy in an ape suit and set out to make a film. It had all the tell-tale signs of being shot on video- poor sound quality mixed with some decent shots, and actors in bad wigs. And with all the heart director Addison Binek could muster up, they set out into the cold cruel world of promoting their film.

Which, oddly, led to me answering a tweet that happened to pop up on my feed with the film makers asking for reviews. They sent me a link and a password- a little more than an hour later, I am back from the jungles with a report. 

I am torn between being highly amused and feeling slightly like the Banana Spinning Sign Guy from the early portion of the film, in which I am also torn between the brilliance of and confusion in choosing to keep much of the footage the crew actually shot for this scene. Admittedly, the most talented performer and hilarious performance comes from the news anchor, played by Grover McCants. Many of the scenes are cut a little oddly, with pacing being a little too brisk at places and then dragging in others. In one scene, the film moves to New York City to follow a pair discussing the ape as they walk through the park. The acting is awful as both performers struggle through dialogue that seems largely improvised on the spot. There are a couple of scenes just like this, including an oddly stretched out argument between two sisters- which seems to stray very far from its original intent. For the record, I agree with the one girl on the rat movie- it's better than the other movie in my book. 

The movie quickly loses steam at around the fifty minute mark as I kept glancing down to check my phone during PsychoApe's trip to New York, which was an inevitable moment given the direction of the film. The puns keep coming and the monkey movie jokes stack up.

3 out of 10, and while not a high recommend I would recommend it for fans of low to no budget studios like Troma and directer Chris Seaver's Mulva: Zombie Ass-kicker series. I got a small kick out of the film, though I also recognize it's not going to be everyone's top banana.