There’s a reason why “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is such a well-known, popular, and entire true saying, with Netflix’s newest zombie moving proving the point in microcosm. If you want people to be instantly aware that a film is about hordes of shuffling reanimated corpses, then the simplest way to get the point across is by adding the exact same suffix as Valley of the Dead.
Following in the footsteps of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Survival of the Dead, Dance of the Dead, and Netflix’s own Army of the Dead, the Spanish-language period piece makes no bones about setting out its stall in nomenclature alone.
Unfolding during the height of the Spanish Civil War, the 1930s-set adventure finds a small band of distrustful and very tenuous allies tasked to defeat a rogue band of zombies that were created as part of a Nazi experiment. Nationalists, anti-fascists, cowards, deserters, soldiers, heroes, and villains all factor into the story at one stage or another, and subscribers can’t seem to get enough.
As per FlixPatrol, Valley of the Dead has already become the fourth most-watched title on the Netflix’s global charts, having secured a Top 10 finish in no less than 65 countries. Admittedly, it hasn’t secured the top spot in any of them, but for a no-frills foreign-language hybrid of action, thriller, horror, and comedy, it remains an impressive achievement.