From the legendary director of Dawn Of The Dead, George A. Romero comes a new take on his terrifying world of the undead.
I loved Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (original and re-make), Day of the Dead and I (vaguely) liked Land of the Dead. So when it came to Diary of the Dead I was hoping for a return to form and a gripping, suspenseful, blood-splattered Romero zombie-fest. Did I get it? Uh...not really. If you've seen Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead has the same "seen through the video camera" perspective. The two films diverge from there though - where Cloverfield was tense and streamlined with likeable characters, Diary of the Dead seems stodgy and saddled with a cast that are either so bland you forget they exist, or are irritating to the point where you're mentally urging them to meet a grisly end.
The cast in question portray a band of college students who are clones of any other group of screaming 20-somethings you'd find in the average low-budget horror movie. Maybe there's a factory churning out batches of them somewhere. I may nip off and throw a wrench into the assembley line. In any case, they slot into recognisable archetypes of "bit nerdy", "bit religious" and so on. Something they all have in common though is a decidedly wooden acting style - I half expected a zombie to bite a chunk out of one of them and spit it out muttering "Ngghh - tastes like MDF". At the other end of the acting spectrum (in terms of being totally over-the-top rather than good quality) is their film class professor, who mostly divides his time between getting sloshed on bourbon, calling people "darling" and dispensing literary quotes in a super-posh English accent.
Plot-wise, after hearing the news of the dead rising and snacking on the living, the group decide to set off in a camper van to their respective homes and find their loved ones. The lead character, Jason (although he's more of a lead disembodied voice - you don't see much of him since he's holding the camera) decides to document their journey and becomes seemingly obsessed with the idea, to the point where he makes mind-bogglingly stupid decisions that endanger himself and his friends and may lead you to rant: "Will someone please drag that camera off him and wallop him with it?"
He's by no means alone in the gormless stakes though. A lot of horror films have those "why would they do that?" moments but the students in Diary of the Dead seem to be frustratingly lemming-esque. Here's a quick example... You're in an isolated location. There are hordes of undead roaming the countryside. Would you...
(A) Fortify the building you're in, maybe strap on some sort of bite-resistant clothing, grab some weapons and be on high alert?
(B) Slip into a nice fluffy white dressing gown and go and run a hot bath with optional bubbles?
Yep, you can guess which option was chosen. Presumably, being squeaky clean and smelling of jojoba is a high priority when you're getting your limbs gnawed off. Oh well.
Another annoyance (I know, I'm on a roll now!) is that the film can be didactic and preachy in places. The use of the first-person camera perspective is connected with the big theme of the film - that with the expansion of the internet, video blogging, YouTube-type sites and so on, we're becoming drowned in an ocean of viewpoints and perspectives to the point where "truth" is obscured. Whew, stressful.
In Dawn of the Dead, Romero tackled the issue of consumer culture in a witty way by setting the conflict in a shopping mall. At least that was a little subtle though and allowed interpretation without bludgeoning you over the head with the message. In Diary of the Dead the subtlety level is more on a par with someone squawking "Listen to my message!!!" through a megaphone into your ear, thanks to a combination of morose voiceovers and montages of video clips that drag us out of the action. Does anyone really want to be lectured on the nature of truth in the middle of a zombie film?
Turning to the positive side of things, the undead themselves are depicted effectively (although there aren't that many of them), the early deserted hospital scene creates quite a claustrophobic atmosphere and there are some dark comic moments, like a zombie-slaying deaf Amish character. These brief highlights just make the mediocrity of the rest of the film all the more apparent though. Diary of the Dead could have been an iconic addition to Romero's series, but instead it disappointingly falls into the "ok but nothing special" pile. In fact I'm so depressed about it, I'm off to munch on some brains. Mmm.
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. When a group of film students making a horror movie in the woods discovers that the dead have begun to revive, they turn their cameras on the real-life horrors that suddenly confront them, creating a first person diary of their bloody encounters and the disintegration of everything they hold dear.
Zombie horror movie directed by George A. Romero. Film student Jason (Joshua Close) and his crew are shooting a mummy movie in the Pennsylvania woods when news reports begin pouring in about the dead rising from their graves. Cast member Ridley (Phillip Riccio) reacts to the news by abandoning the group and retreating to his family's fortified mansion halfway across the state, while the remaining cast and crew are forced to fight for their lives despite having no weapons and only an old Winnebago in which to seek shelter. The group soon realise that there is no escape from the plague of the living dead.
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