Army of the Dead starts as husband & wife John (Ross Kelly) & Amy Barnes (Stefani Marchesi) drive through the Baja desert in California when Amy springs a surprise on her hubby John, she has set up a weekend of desert rally driving with a group of their friends & professional guides. John is pleased. Along for the fun is college professor Gordon Vasquez (Miguel Martinez) who has his own motives for joining the rally, Vasquez know's the legend surrounding the lost city of El Dorado & it's gold. Breaking away from the main group Vasquez finds El Dorado & finds the vast amounts of gold inside but also discovers that the curse is also true, a curse that says when any of the gold is taken the skeletal army of the dead will rise to kill those who took it & return it to it's right place in El Dorado. Soon the Baja desert is swarming with an army of killer skeletons intent on killing all who have come into contact with the gold...
Co-edited, co-produced & directed by Joseph Conti this low budget horror film homage to the likes of Army of Darkness (1992) & the skeletal army from the end of Jason and the Argonauts (1963) apparently had the working title Curse of the Anasazi & I was surprised at just how much I liked this, don't get me wrong that's not to say I thought Army of the Dead was a classic but for what it is I quite enjoyed it & was even impressed with it on a few occasions. At 90 minutes long Army of the Dead has a decent pace & once the titular skeletal stars turn up about halfway though it never lets up until the end, to be honest I am not really sure who I would recommend Army of the Dead to as it has plenty of flaws but I liked it. I liked the story about the legend of the lost city of gold & it's skeletal protectors who rise from the grave to safeguard it, the character's are basic & clichéd but serviceable & there's slightly more gore than I expected as well. It's just a shame that there are as many negatives as positives, it's fairly basic & predictable, a lot of the effects work is poor & the lack of any decent character's mean the film lacks any real depth. I don't know why but I just liked it, I can't be much more specific than that really.
For a low budget film Army of the Dead has ambitions, from rallying scenes to an entire CGI computer animated army of skeletons that look quite impressive at times but at other's look laughable which does tend to overshadow the positives. The skeletons themselves are nicely detailed & look pretty good but some of the animation is very poor, the way they interact with the cast & surround objects is also poor. The idea of skeletons ripping themselves of freshly dead people to join the army is a neat idea & the blood soaked skeletons look cool but once again why does the blood not drip or why do they not leave bloody footprints on the floor? The electricity effects at the end are very poor as are the crumbling skeletons, why would the electricity make them fall apart anyway? There's some decent gore here, some gory stabbings, shootings & a slit throat included. There are also one or two good moments like the skeletons firing flaming arrows or a reasonably atmospheric period opening sequence set in 1590 as a group of soldiers are slaughtered by the skeletons but in silhouette against flickering flame lit cave walls.
With a supposed budget of about $1,500,000 I think most of that actually ends up on screen, apparently filmed in New Mexico. The acting is pretty poor although the character's are so shallow the actor's had nothing to work with.
Army of the Dead is a film with lots of positives that I liked but just as many negatives that I didn't, it's a film I didn't hate & would maybe give it another watch but I would still find it hard to recommend to anyone so the five out of ten is purely my personal opinion. I have seen much, much worse. A curious mixture of the quite impressive & the downright awful.
Co-edited, co-produced & directed by Joseph Conti this low budget horror film homage to the likes of Army of Darkness (1992) & the skeletal army from the end of Jason and the Argonauts (1963) apparently had the working title Curse of the Anasazi & I was surprised at just how much I liked this, don't get me wrong that's not to say I thought Army of the Dead was a classic but for what it is I quite enjoyed it & was even impressed with it on a few occasions. At 90 minutes long Army of the Dead has a decent pace & once the titular skeletal stars turn up about halfway though it never lets up until the end, to be honest I am not really sure who I would recommend Army of the Dead to as it has plenty of flaws but I liked it. I liked the story about the legend of the lost city of gold & it's skeletal protectors who rise from the grave to safeguard it, the character's are basic & clichéd but serviceable & there's slightly more gore than I expected as well. It's just a shame that there are as many negatives as positives, it's fairly basic & predictable, a lot of the effects work is poor & the lack of any decent character's mean the film lacks any real depth. I don't know why but I just liked it, I can't be much more specific than that really.
For a low budget film Army of the Dead has ambitions, from rallying scenes to an entire CGI computer animated army of skeletons that look quite impressive at times but at other's look laughable which does tend to overshadow the positives. The skeletons themselves are nicely detailed & look pretty good but some of the animation is very poor, the way they interact with the cast & surround objects is also poor. The idea of skeletons ripping themselves of freshly dead people to join the army is a neat idea & the blood soaked skeletons look cool but once again why does the blood not drip or why do they not leave bloody footprints on the floor? The electricity effects at the end are very poor as are the crumbling skeletons, why would the electricity make them fall apart anyway? There's some decent gore here, some gory stabbings, shootings & a slit throat included. There are also one or two good moments like the skeletons firing flaming arrows or a reasonably atmospheric period opening sequence set in 1590 as a group of soldiers are slaughtered by the skeletons but in silhouette against flickering flame lit cave walls.
With a supposed budget of about $1,500,000 I think most of that actually ends up on screen, apparently filmed in New Mexico. The acting is pretty poor although the character's are so shallow the actor's had nothing to work with.
Army of the Dead is a film with lots of positives that I liked but just as many negatives that I didn't, it's a film I didn't hate & would maybe give it another watch but I would still find it hard to recommend to anyone so the five out of ten is purely my personal opinion. I have seen much, much worse. A curious mixture of the quite impressive & the downright awful.