Hanging out in the Netflix Top Ten since its release May 21st, Army of the Dead is a grab bag of classic zombie tropes wrapped up in the neon dystopia of Las Vegas. Director Zack Snyder shows a real love of the genre, referencing both modern and classic zombie films with new ideas, bleeding out a unique concept with Army of the Dead. But while anything goes in a zombie movie, some directions raise too many questions for a modest budget to cover. That direction in Army of the Dead would be zombie animals.
Or rather two zombie animals. Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead finds a zombie horde quarantined within the besieged Las Vegas as the country prepares to nuke the city of sin. It’s a classic zombie tale, one of which Snyder is familiar with 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake in his filmography, wherein a ragtag group head into the infested Vegas to break into a safe as funded by a probably evil casino owner. Once taken inside by a “coyote,” the quarantine zone is (surprise) more than expected. The dead aren’t just alive… they’re organized.
Army of the Dead is so much fun that while many parts of the movie are completely silly (even when trying to be sincere) those moments can be forgiven, even wrapped up in shattered neon. The one exception is Valentine. Formerly one of Siegfried and Roy's wide collection of tigers, Valentine is a white tiger zombie that guards the perimeter of the Vegas quarantine zone. He’s seen first prowling around, growling, half his face hanging off his skull. It’s a great idea and a tantalizing image, plus the visual model was interestingly a tiger from Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue of Tiger King fame, but inspires a lot of questions. Especially when the Alpha zombie (Zeus, yes that’s its name) rides into a scene on, yes, a zombie horse. Questions like, where are the other zombie animals?
Army of the Dead isn’t the first zombie film or property to introduce zombie animals. 2002’s Resident Evil featured zombie Doberman’s and the third installment, 2007’s Resident Evil: Extinction, included a harrowing scene of infected crows descending on Alice and the survivors. Obviously, Pet Sematary featured an array of buried but not gone pets as did Night of the Creeps with its parasitic slugs and Rufus the Cat in the hands of Dr. West in The ReAnimator. But those were zombie conceits that either didn’t utilize infection spread by contact or were following the beats of the material it was adapted from.
The Resident Evil franchise, of course, was adapted from the popular video game series which famously included a zombie elephant boss, notoriously hard to kill, in the “wild things” scenario of Resident Evil Outbreak File #2. For Resident Evil films, including zombie animals is about hitting game beats for the fans, not fleshing out the world.
But Valentine (and the horse) in Army of the Dead are distinct parts of the world. When Valentine lumbers into the scene, the audience has just been tutored on this zombie story’s zombie rules. Namely, a bite from the Alpha (not any Alpha, but Zeus) results in an Alpha zombie (ie a fast zombie). Any other bite results in a Shambler or slow zombie. Valentine is cognizant (jury’s out on the horse) meaning, by the rules, that Zeus the Alpha turned Valentine the white tiger.
However to do that, Zeus the Alpha would have had to have been in the private zoo where Valentine was living. So… what happened to the other animals? Not to mention, Las Vegas is notorious for private zoos. Where are the zombie otters? The zombie seals? The zombie flamingoes? The zombie hippos? The zombie dolphins? Zombie bears. Zombie Maltese. Zombie chimps. Alpha or Shambler, where are the zombie rats?
Rats are the answer. To establish an animal can be a zombie is to beg the question humans have been nervously asking since the middle ages. “Can rats still carry the plague?”. It’s one thing to introduce a zombie animal and leave audiences wondering about all the other big mammals that can be infected. Like Blue Whales. It’s another consider super spreader species that move quickly, breed fast, and can be anywhere. A rat or mouse or, heaven forbid, cockroach infected with a zombie virus is the end of the world in a week. Full stop. And that’s just not a great movie.
It’d be impressive for a zombie movie to tackle that challenge but zombie fans may have to scratch that itch with other media (although even Max Brooks avoided the subject in his novel World World Z) as zombie films are rarely the subject that garner big studio budgets. And infecting the world’s pests and large fauna with zombieism won’t be cheap. In the meantime, Valentine the zombie white tiger is one of a kind in the unique approach of Army of the Dead.