10 Horror Movies That Squandered HUGE Potential
3. Army of the Dead
For all the flak he gets, credit where it's due to Zack Snyder - the premise for Army of the Dead was an absolute home run. A heist movie set in a zombie-infested Las Vegas? Sounds great.
Yet Army of the Dead was ultimately more exhausting than entertaining, with its gruelling 148-minute runtime resulting in a canvas overstuffed with half-baked subplots and characters.
Beyond that, Snyder's stylistic choices were arguably more of an encumbrance than a benefit - the excess of slow-motion quickly became tiresome, and his decision to shoot the film wide open with an ultra-shallow depth of field was more distracting than artistic.
There was probably a decent 100-minute movie trapped in here somewhere, but Army of the Dead is ultimately a garish mess of confidently incorrect choices, enough that it doesn't fully satisfy as either a zombie movie or a heist romp, let alone a bold collision of the two.