Army of the Dead (2008) (V) - Reviewed by axlish
Reviewed By: axlish
Release Date: January 15th, 2008
Directed by: Joseph Conti
Released: Maverick Entertainment Group
.5 out of 5 Skulls
Army of the Dead. Could it be an insanely early screener for Zack Snyder’s yet to be released zombie epic follow up to 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake? No such luck. In stead we have Joseph Conti’s direct to video movie of the same name. Well I like the title, so perhaps we have a nice little low budget zombie epic on our hands? Not quite. 
What we do have is a story of a few young people in dune buggies heading into the Baja Peninsula to meet their professor for an archeological dig. At the campfire that night, the professor tells them of a lost city of gold. The only problem is that in 1590, one thousand men were never seen again after being sent on a hunt for said city. Pretty soon, some military guys show up to help the professor, but now demand fifty percent of the share. Forced to agree, the professor leads them to the dig site. Once inside, they find the city of gold, but also unleash a thousand skeletal warriors. 
The movie then turns into a lot of CGI shots of a skeletal army, much like the shots used in Army of Darkness (hey, that sounds familiar). Only in this case, the humans are rarely seen in the same shot as the skeletons, and when they are, it is almost always a one on one fight. The CGI for the skeletons is decent, but it gets a little hokey after a while when you keep seeing a huge army approaching but are never in the same shot as the remaining humans.
Worst of all, Maverick Entertainment Group saw fit to splash a large, non-removable watermark over the top third of the screen for the duration of the film (as is seen in the screen captures). This was extremely distracting and made a bad film worse. I understand the need to flash “screener copy” across the screen from time to time, but not for the entire movie.
Not Recommended