Kevin Smith Reviews Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead

Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is now streaming on Netflix and when it comes to the filmmaker’s return to the zombie movie genre, the film has gone over fairly well with critics. Army of the Dead currently sits (at least at the time of this writing) at a 69 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. The film has done well with audiences as well, sitting at a 76 percent audience score. Now, pop culture fan Kevin Smith is weighing in with his review of the film and it seems that Smith can be counted among Army of the Dead‘s fans.

In a recent episode of Smith’s Fatman Beyond podcast with Marc Bernardin, Smith said that he liked Army of the Dead, specifically pointing out how the film tells the story of how Las Vegas ends up in the state it does.

“There’s wonderful tongue-in-cheek stuff,” Smith said. “I especially liked how they did the backstory because you know not every zombie backstory is the same but they are all kind of virtually the same. So instead of just like, you know, taking for granted that this is a world where sh*t has been going on forever, they kind of do a montage. You know, the story of how Vegas becomes the land of the dead and sh*t that’s fun at the same time because it’s done to a bunch of schmaltzy Vegas songs.”

Bernardin, for his part, said that he thought the film might have been just a little bit too long, but they could both agree on Tig Notaro was a solid addition. Smith also noted that the whole cast was solid.

“There were no weak links in the f*cking cast, like it’s just well done,” Smith said.

Smith and Bernardin also talked a bit about the technical side of Notaro’s appearance in the film, commenting on how much it cost to bring her in. Notaro was a late addition to the film, with her character replacing Chris D’Elia, a move that required not only for D’Elia’s appearance to be removed entirely but for Notaro to be filmed separately from the cast and then have her work inserted later. Snyder, who served as his own Director of Photography on the film, previously spoke with UPROXX about the challenges of pulling that feat off.

“Maybe I’ll get some kind of technical award as a DP for putting her in that movie because that part was hard,” Snyder said. “It was funny because I shot the movie in a really super organic way, and I was like, oh, this is going to be cool, available light, and it’s going to be minimal and all this. And then cut to me on the stage, I have to recreate that in the most sterile circumstance possible with the most lights and the most everything. And so it was interesting. You have to really understand where the light is all the time to make it match, and you light the green screens correctly, it’s really problematic, but it was good. It was fun. It was an awesome exercise. And Tig is awesome.

Snyder added, “I was shocked that she said yes, frankly. So that was the goodness for me, that she wanted to do it.”

Army of the Dead is now streaming on Netflix.