At the end of the day, there’s really only two kinds of horror movies: ones that deliver visceral shock and one that where the ideas/implications are what get under your skin. Now, I personally love both; but, it’s worth seeing the value in both.
Henry here falls into the latter. It’s the mundanity of it all that catches you off-guard. Acting and context, that’s what really makes it unsettling. One of the great cases of a low budget being turned into an asset instead of a hinderance.
Hyper lurid pulp melodrama all shot in Technicolor ‘Scope and littered with anachronistic flourishes (those cross dissolves are the best).
Really dug this.
Is this way too long? Yes. Is the shallow focus overused? Also yes. Do the big emotional beats land? Not really. Are the needle drops insanely obvious? You better believe they are!
Does ARMY OF THE DEAD still rock in spite and because of all that? Fuck yeah, it does! What Snyder has done here is simply creating a monument to greed in the modern context via a straightforward riff on ALIENS, TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and (fittingly enough)…
