Army of the Dead is a movie that offers a new twist on the zombie movie. Not only is it a heist movie, but the zombies in it are not your usual Walking Dead variety – at least not all of them.
Here are four types of zombies we have seen or heard about so far:
These are the new zombies. As Lily the Coyote says, “They’re not what you think they are. They’re smarter, they’re faster, they’re organized.” The alpha zombie is a strong, sentient zombie that can plan, control other zombies, and piece together armor & clothing.
They might even be capable of some level of romantic feelings.
Zach Snyder apparently mentioned “Alpha elites,” so there’s no surprise there’s a “queen” zombie, as well as a king, ie Zeus.
According to Deborah Snyder, the alphas can communicate non-verbally like a wolfpack. And only Zeus can create other alphas with his bite. The bite of other alphas creates shamblers.
The word “shamble” means to walk while shuffling or dragging the feet. The shambler zombies are your traditional zombies – the slow, decomposing undead who have been robbed of everything but their most basic instincts to grab, bite & eat.
There are also different shambler zombies depending on the color of their blood. We’re not sure if this is a level of decomposition or something more.
In Army of the Dead, we see Zeus riding a zombie horse, and we see the featured decomposing zombie tiger. It is also said that the prequel, Army of Thieves, will feature zombie dogs. While it’s unusual, it doesn’t seem that strange for animals to also suffer from the outbreak. Apparently, birds are one of the animals that are are immune.
While Snyder has remained mysterious about this zombie type, he has given us a little to chew on. We really don’t know much besides that they exist.
According to a Q&A with Screen Rant, Snyder was quoted as saying, “…if you pay close attention, there’s a number of zombies that are clearly not zombies. You see normal zombies and then you see some robot zombies. Are they monitors that the government has placed among the zombies to monitor them? Are they technology from the other world? What’s happening there?“