ARMY OF THE DEAD

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film starts with a convoy of soldiers transporting a highly classified package from Area 51. As the soldiers speculate as to what it could be, a newlywed couple is driving down the same road, and the husband becomes distracted as he receives a blowjob. The couple crashes into the truck, blowing themselves up while the payload comes loose. The soldiers approach it and are met by a humongous zombie, Zeus (Richard Cetrone), who proceeds to tear the soldiers apart. He corners the two drivers and rips one’s jaw off before biting the other one. The two become zombies, and Zeus has his sights set on Las Vegas.

Zombies soon start to overrun Vegas, leading several mercenaries to head in and eliminate as many creatures as possible. Many casualties occur, but soon the whole city becomes walled off from the rest of the world.

Years pass, and one of the mercenaries, Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) is working at a diner when he is approached by billionaire casino owner Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada). He informs Scott that there is $200 million beneath the Vegas strip under his hotel, and he wants Scott and a team to get the money before the government nukes Vegas to wipe out all the zombies. Tanaka tells Scott that he can take $50 million and split it amongst his crew.

Scott’s daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) works as a volunteer at a quarantine zone camp. She is friends with a woman named Geeta (Huma Qureshi) and helps her look after her two kids. Geeta wants to enlist the aid of a woman named Lilly, AKA “The Coyote” (Nora Arnezeder), who helps smuggle people out of the camp past the city. Geeta just wants to get enough money to bribe the guards to get her and her kids out of the camps. The ladies are then harassed by a volatile guard named Burt Cummings (Theo Rossi), who looks for whatever excuse he can to torment the women.

Scott is haunted by the fact that he was forced to kill his wife in front of Kate after she became a zombie, and it is part of why Kate hasn’t seen him in years. He reluctantly agrees with Tanaka to go through with the job. Scott begins by recruiting an old friend and teammate, Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), who is working as a mechanic. She doesn’t hesitate to join Scott, and they go recruit another former teammate, Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick), who works at a retirement home. They then go after safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighofer), helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro), and zombie killer Mikey Guzman (Raul Castillo).

The team goes to meet Tanaka to go over the plan. Guzman brings two other members, Damon (Colin Jones) and Chambers (Samantha Win), although Damon leaves when he learns that zombies are involved. Tanaka gives the team blueprints for the job, and he sends them with his right-hand man Martin (Garrett Dillahunt). They head towards the city’s entrance, where Scott reunites with Kate, although it is obviously a rough reunion. They recruit Lilly to join them, but when Kate learns that Geeta asked Lilly for help and didn’t come back from the city with her, Kate punches Lilly in the face. Lilly insists that she did not intend to leave Geeta behind, but there is a possibility she is still alive. Kate decides to join the team, despite Scott’s objections. Lilly also manages to get Cummings to go along, claiming she needs one more guy.

The team makes it into Vegas, where they find a zombie tiger named Valentine guarding the outside. As they proceed to move forward, Lilly shoots Cummings in the leg and ties him up, stating that there are smarter, stronger, alpha zombies out there, and she intended to bring Cummings as an offering in retribution for him raping the women at the camps. The team hides while the queen of the zombies, The Bride (Athena Perample), comes by to sniff Cummings before she and another zombie drag him away to the Olympus casino, where Kate thinks Geeta may be. Sure enough, Cummings is brought before Zeus and his horde of alpha zombies, and Zeus turns the cowardly guard into one of them with a bite.

The team moves forward underground, where Lilly warns them about the hibernating zombies. They attempt to move quietly past the zombies, but Chambers accidentally bumps into one. She stabs it in the head, but another wakes up. Head stab. Then ANOTHER wakes up. Head stab. The last one’s arm causes some trays to slide down, causing noise that wakes all the zombies up. The team starts to fire on them, and Chambers manages to kill a few, but she becomes overwhelmed and bitten. She looks to Guzman, who remorsefully shoots one of her gas tanks to blow her and the other zombies up so that the others can get out.

The team makes it further in, where they discover more blueprints to the building, meaning Tanaka has had other teams come in and die for his money. Martin claims to deny knowing anything about it. The team splits up, with Martin and Lilly going to do a perimeter check, Peters starting up the helicopter, Dieter joining Vanderohe and Guzman to the vault, and Scott and Kate go to turn on the power. While together, Scott and Kate discuss them being estranged, which Kate says had more to do with Scott not being there for her after her mom died. Meanwhile, Dieter tries to find a safe way into the safe when he and the others find multiple skeletons of other mercenaries.

Outside, Martin and Lilly encounter The Bride. Martin manages to overpower her and behead her, telling Lilly that the head is worth more than what is in the vault. Zeus later rides by on his zombie horse with his own bulletproof helmet and finds The Bride’s headless body. He mourns her and pulls out their unborn zombie baby. He roars and leads the other alphas to get the humans.

Vanderohe and Guzman find a zombie to use as bait by tossing a microwaved hand to the end of the hall so that he can set off all the booby traps and leave the path safe for the other three. At the same time, the others learn that the nuke launch has been moved up, leaving them until sunset to get the money and flee. The helicopter starts to malfunction, and Peters has to fix it.

The rest of the team reconvenes down by the vault, where Dieter successfully opens it. The team rejoices in their discovery and starts to take their shares out. On their way out, Maria admits to Scott that she agreed to the mission not for the money, but for him. He admits that he thought he messed things up between them after the outbreak, but it appears they are willing to give it another shot…and then an elevator full of zombies comes down. One of them grabs Maria’s head and twists it 180 degrees, to Scott’s horror, but he is forced to fight and run. Meanwhile, Martin traps Lilly as he escapes with The Bride’s head, saying that that’s what Tanaka wanted all along, with the intention of using her DNA to create a whole zombie army to control. Dieter and Vanderohe fight off the zombies near the vault, but Dieter is killed while Vanderohe becomes trapped inside the vault when it shuts.

The team continues to try and escape, but Guzman is bitten and sets off grenades to kill the zombies and himself. Martin tries to make off with the head but is found by Valentine, who tosses him around viciously until finally making a meal out of Martin’s head. Scott and Lilly make it to the fixed helicopter, but they are found by Zeus. Lilly holds The Bride’s head, having switched it before Martin found out, and uses it to hold Zeus off while Scott and Peters get away. Zeus impales Lilly with a bar, but she tosses The Bride’s head and makes it splatter on the pavement before Zeus can get it.

Scott realizes that Kate went to the Olympus to try and find Geeta, and he convinces Peters to help him find her. Kate finds Geeta and another woman named Sadie. They encounter the zombified Cummings, who kills Sadie before the other zombies show up. Kate shoots Cummings in the head while trying to get away with Geeta. The two encounter Scott, who holds Zeus off with a grenade. They make it to the roof, where Peters appears to have left them, but she comes back after changing her mind. As they fly away, Zeus jumps onto the chopper and fights Scott. Peters attempts to fly fast enough just as the nuke drops onto Vegas. In the ensuing chaos, Zeus bites Scott in the arm, but he manages to grab his gun and blow Zeus’s head off. The impact of the blast catches up to the chopper and causes it to crash, killing Peters and Geeta. Kate survives and goes to Scott, who is dying. He gives her enough money to help Geeta’s kids get out of the camp. She tearfully says goodbye to her father and shoots him in the head when he becomes a zombie. Kate breaks down just as another helicopter comes to recover her.

In the ruins of Vegas, Vanderohe emerges from the vault with his shares of the money. He finds a car and drives to an airport, where he rents a private plane. As he does a toast with the stewardesses, he starts to feel dizzy. Vanderohe goes to the bathroom and discovers a bite mark on his arm…and the pilot says they are about to descend into Mexico City.

Las Vegas becomes ground zero for a zombie outbreak after a humongous zombie called Zeus breaks free. Years later, mercenary Scott Ward is recruited by billionaire casino owner Bly Tanaka to recover $200 million from a vault under his casino before the government nukes Vegas. Scott recruits old teammates Maria Cruz and Vanderohe, plus safecracker Ludwig Dieter, pilot Marianne Peters, zombie killers Mikey Guzman and Chambers, and a smuggler named Lilly, AKA The Coyote. Scott's estranged daughter Kate (who stopped talking to him after Scott had to kill her zombified mother) joins because a friend of hers in the containment camps she works at is trapped in the city. They also bring a sadistic camp guard named Cummings.

When they get into the city, Lilly shoots Cummings to offer him up to the alpha zombies, being Zeus and his queen, The Bride. They proceed into the casino, where Chambers is killed after being overwhelmed by zombies. They make it to the vault after Dieter opens it, but after collecting their money, Maria is killed by another zombie after appearing to want to try a relationship with Scott. Tanaka's right hand man Martin beheads The Bride and tells Lilly that that is what Tanaka wanted all along, with the intention of using alpha zombie DNA to create his own zombie army. Although Martin attempts to leave the team to die while he takes The Bride's head, Lilly already switched the head out and leaves Martin to the mercy of a zombie tiger named Valentine.

The city nuking is moved up to just after sunset, and as the team tries to escape, Dieter and Guzman are killed, while Scott has to go find Kate since she went looking for her friend Geeta. Lilly is killed by Zeus, but she destroys The Bride's head before he gets it back. Scott has Peters fly to the casino to find Kate, who kills a zombified Cummings. They escape in the helicopter, but Zeus attacks and bites Scott just as the nuke drops on the city. Scott shoots Zeus in the head just before the helicopter crashes, killing Peters and Geeta. Kate survives and Scott gives her money to help Geeta's kids before she has to shoot him as becomes a zombie. Another chopper comes for Kate.

Vanderohe survived the blast since he was locked in the vault, but as he flies into Mexico City with his money, he discovers that he was bitten.