Movie Review - “Diary of the Dead”
NO STARS
“Diary of the Dead” (also known as George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead) is a terrible zombie horror film out in limited release. Although independently produced, it is distributed by Dimension Films and was released on February 15, 2008. Romero and friends put in $10,000 a piece to produce what became one of the most celebrated horror films of all time; “Night of the Living Dead” from 1968. And let me tell you, this movie is nothing like that classic film.
Romero’s last zombie film “Land of the Dead” (from 2007) was a fun and gory zombie flick with some tense moments in it. “Diary of the Dead” has to be the worst out of Romero’s 5 zombie films (the other two are the classics “Day of the Dead” from 1985 and “Dawn of the Dead” from 1978). Unfortunately “Diary of the Dead” should have been left for dead and never brought to the big screen.
The plot of this painfully silly film follows a group of film students who are making an independent horror film. They soon become trapped in a world being consumed by flesh-eating zombies and turn their attention toward making the film into a documentary on their personal horror experiences. What seems like a familiar and creative premise (the characters record the footage with hand held cameras like in “The Blair Witch Project” and “Cloverfield”) ends up becoming amateurish, corny and cheesy.
There are no real cool death scenes or mass zombie feeding frenzies in this film; instead we are treated to whiney bad acting and ridiculous plot devices that add nothing to the plot. The embarrassing dialog from the screenplay and the shaky camera work only cheapen this train wreck even more. I hate to say it, but this film offers nothing new to the zombie genre at all.
This film has quite a lot of cool missed opportunities in it whcih is a shame. This boring mess isn’t even worthy of a straight to DVD release or even for cable. Zombie films are my favorite out of the horror genre, so it doesn’t make me feel good to report that the king of gore has screwed up big time. I wish I could recommend at least one cool death scene or some sort of funny line in this movie, but I can’t, which is a real shame coming from a ultimate horror fan.
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