DigitalRevenantX7 A group of archaeological students travel to the Mexican desert for a weekend of dirt racing in honour of their friend John Barnes' birthday. But the professor has an ulterior motive – along with some mercenaries, he plans to locate & loot a massive treasure of gold that was left by the Anasazi, an ancient people who lived in the area. But once he finally finds the treasure, he accidentally releases the treasure's guardians – an army of undead skeletons led by a feared conquistador who wanted to steal the treasure but died in the process. As the skeletons attack the students' camp, Barnes & his friends must find a way to defeat the hundreds of killer skeletons that are assaulting them.The killer skeleton film is a rare subgenre in the horror field. The most notable ones to use them were in a supplementary fashion – the old 1950s stop-motion fantasy films like Jason & the Argonauts had some awesome stop-motion skeleton warriors & more recently the Sam Raimi Evil Dead sequel ARMY OF DARKNESS, which was technically not really a horror film but had some brilliantly funny moments & a great battle scene with knights up against an army of skeletons. Since then, the idea of killer skeletons has been mostly dismissed… until now.Army of the Dead is a 2007 attempt to give the idea a whole feature airing. Of course, stop-motion is so passé so the producers used cheap CGI to animate a whole army of skeletons, which looks pretty good until you realise that the skeletons are just one model being cut-&-pasted several times to resemble a whole army. The scenes where the skeletons directly interact with the humans are shoddy & the CGI blood & explosions used are even poorer CGI creations.The story is a riff on the recent Pirates of the Caribbean films, most notably the first one – an ancient but cursed treasure with an army of undead guardians protecting it for eternity – but with that source franchise making a lot of money to the point that at time of writing this, a fifth instalment is being produced, this film's novelty value will be eroded significantly. The characters are reasonably well drawn – an advantage over some of the other horror films coming out of the independent sector as of late – and the acting is also quite good, but the film fails to generate much in the way of suspense & the skeleton attacks are quite hokey.

Paul Andrews 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.

joeymarkgraf 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.

stormruston This was just short of being a complete waste of time. The stop animation skeletons saved it.It was strange seeing actors taking such a poorly written movie and playing it completely straight, as if they thought this was something good. That said the actors could on the whole act. I like "B" movies but they need certain redeeming features for them to work: either they need humor, gore or cleverness. This lacked all three. Yes there was some CGI and I suppose it almost gave me a laugh, but that is because it looked like rivers and fountains coming out of the people "bleeding". Seeing a one foot wide wall of CGI blood hit a windscreen and then in the next scene there are just a few dots of blood on that car...well...and this was about par for the movie. Just not worth your time.