Army of the Dead (2008)

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

Like wearing a wet sock, this movie is best described as unpleasant. Even at the best of times this movie is amusing when it is sposed to be scary or thrilling. Like most low budget movies, it has a few borrowed ideas mixed with some other borrowed ideas, most of which are executed poorly. This is not to say that it is boring, it isn't. It does have it's charms even though they are sometimes far apart. It also has its fair share of loop holes, but that is something that people expect with this kind of movie. Something else people expect is not-so-good acting, and this has its fair share of poorly delivered lines and the main character is comparable to a piece of 2 by 4 that you could find at your local Home Depot. While I have tried to avoid it, I have to mention that this movie does use CGI and it is just awful, not the worst though. It is still not really excusable as it was also overused and some shots were repeated.What the director and writer of this movie forgot about is that thrillers and and horror movies need suspense to work, this movie has none, everything is cheap and in your face and because of this it isn't the least bit scary. Movie makers with a low budget need to remember these kind of things as I believe this is one of the main things that lets this genre down.Also ignore that the golden city of El Dorado is meant to be in the Amazon somewhere, not the Californian desert.2 stars.

The title grabbed me right away, then I read the synopsis, and watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. No, it isn't Oscar material and also no, you've never heard of any of the actors, but they did a first-rate job and the story line was very good. I watched it without leaving my seat one, and was absolutely THRILLED that, for once, all the good guys DIDN'T get killed. I also thought that the skeletons were greedy; after all, what were they going to do with all that gold besides build buildings? And anyway, how comfortable would a 24 kt gold house be in the winter?Anyway, the acting was very good and the story was great, so I give 10 stars. And I thought Kristen was awfully cute!

Good: The story could be interesting. Bad: The dialog is terrible, the filming is terrible, the CG is way beyond bad.(Poor use of it, not the quality.)It's like they had a free pass to not give a care about what they put together because it was cheap. I honestly believe that it was shot, and edited in two days, then hours later slipped in the redbox that I rented it from. To top it off, I didn't even pay for it and yet I'm still offended that I wasted my rental on this. I think that they didn't even read the scrip before they shot it, then didn't watch it before they released it. There is more directing and editing talent in an adult films than in this film.Unless you enjoy amateur films, and I mean REALLY amateur films, don't waste your time.