Diary of the Dead: The Review (May Contain Spoilers)

Om Nom Nom Nom... Brains... Diary of the Dead is 5th Zombie offering from grandfather of the zombie genre, George A Romero, after Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead. Tragically, in his old age, it seems the master is succumbing to a lack of subtlety which always set his movies apart from other shit fest zombie flicks.

So, in the style of Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project and others, Diary of the Dead follows a group of teens (who else?) and their amazingly English stereotype college professor, as they open in the woods to film a project on a hand-held camera for their course. In this case, a take on the old style Mummy films (Not the ones with Brendan Fasier... They aren't old. I mean like, Really old, with Boris Karloff. Older than your parents. Unless you're like 48... Where am I going with this?). Filming is interrupted by confused news reports of the dead coming back to life and trying to eat the flesh of the living. Strangely, no-one goes "Shit, we're in a Romero movie!", but they do have the common sense to bundle into a large motor home and try to reach token screaming girl #2's parents house. On the way, there is gratuitous hospital based zombie violence all over the fucking place, with no attempt at scares what-so-ever. They also take supplies from a group of ghetto peeps of the streets who are about as token as there could ever get, get attacked by zombies, losing another faceless support actor, and get hijacked by the army and robbed of supplies (a part that could've been potentially a great insight into the shitiness of human behaviour under pressure, but because the "camera" is turned off, it's utterly missed, and summarised in a lame way afterwards... As if we couldn't work that out.) and more bland side characters are bitten, eaten and otherwise sprayed with amazing fake gore. Eventually, the group reach a friends house/mansion, where it turns out he's gone a wee but crazy. Zombies attack, the English guy uses a mother fucking bow and arrow, because apparently all us British are still experts in medieval weaponry. The narrator/cameraman is killed, as is pretty much everyone else bar the professor, Screaming Girl #2 and some Guy. The girl chooses to continue documenting the events outside the gargantuan panic room in the mansion. The other 2 aren't morons, and hide in it. Because she narrates the footage, and it's implied to have been found on youtube, we assume she survived.

Right... Good points are few and far between. The gore and violence is very very slick and impressive, but woefully overdone. No cut away's to imply horror and set the viewers mind racing, no, it's all CG and animatronic gore, which kinda reduces the impact of the whole thing. The film also lacks ANY scares. Not one. Not even a "Boo! ARGH!!!" moment, which I can normally admit to making me jump, even if it isn't really scary, which for a movie of the zombie subgenre, is a little weak. Every single character is a lame stereotype so 2D that it's amazingly difficult to feel sorry for them when some zombie is chomping down on their entrails, because to be honest, I couldn't even remember their names. The English Scotch drinking, pessimistic, sword wielding professor was possibly the worst of them all, although the ghetto kids the teens come across are a bit pathetic too with their "Now ain't no-one gonna stop us fo'shizzle" etc. I know Zombie films aren't well reknowned for their character development, but it's hard to create a sense of terror, when to be honest, you want the characters to get munched away just so you don't have to listen to their epically poor acting and scripting. The Camera technique... is a cool idea, and I liked it both the films I mentioned above, but here, it gets used to poor effect. For some reason, music is used over the top of the film... Which, unless the kids are being followed by a fucking symphony orchestra, is a little bizarre to say the least. The camera is often turned off or put away at times which would actually lend to some decent social commentary, almost as if Romero is to lazy to bother with any film direction. Unlike Dawn of the Dead, which utters slight, social ideas and stabbing realism into the zombie behaviour, diary attempts to work on the idea of the importance of the world wide media, spreading information through a touch of a button via the net. To be honest, Zombies all about, bbc news is the last place I'm likely to be. Nice attempt George, but it's all a little... In your face.

3.7/10

Oz Rembrandt