Diary of the Dead (2007)

How sad is this?

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's something faintly ludicrous about the opening shots of this 'found footage' entrance into George A Romero's entry into his 'Living Dead' series. A live news broadcast is interrupted when corpses in the background come back to half-life and start attacking those around them. To me, found footage works best when you don't see too much – the characters on screen reacting to something out of the audience's vision works very well in that style. Fully made-up zombies fit better into a more stylised, 'professionally filmed' scenario.Things don't improve hugely when we meet a film crew, including actors playing actors playing both in front of, and behind the camera. 'Hilarity' ensures when two cast members 'have to pee', leaving the rest to view on the news reports how the dead are coming back to life. Amongst the teens, we have a uproariously well-spoken elderly ham Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) who clearly feels he's demeaning himself by appearing in the film being made. Whispering, identical horny youngsters, someone (Jason – played by Joshua Close) who films *everything* despite being repeatedly asked not to, posturing, wall-to-wall expletives – all the staples of a teen horror, and by Romero's standards, BAD. Apart from anything else, the advantages and unique qualities of the archive formula are simply not used here. The 'story' doesn't need to be told in this way, and is just a gimmick. Could it be Romero was seeking financial success by attempting to attract the youth demographic? It is explained at the beginning that, to make events more frightening, the young film-makers have added incidental music to events – and yet failed to edit out moments when (as is always the way in these things) the cameras start to fail and cut off.Anyway, as events fail to progress, I am gagging for some cadaverous zombie to limp in and violently dismember people. When they eventually turn up, they are half-hearted, under-made-up and easily dispatched. The alleged good guys remain personality-free, rather a growing band of posers 'doing what they gotta do'. How did Romero allow this to be made? To spend so much time with these people and for not one of them to effect any kind of personality for the duration is one thing, but when the undead action is as scarce as it is here, it makes for a hugely dull experience.Happily, the next in the series 'Survival of the Dead (2009)' is a huge improvement on this.

I don't understand why this movie enjoys such a vast following with cameos from the greats of horror. This movie was so poorly acted. We made fun of it the entire time thinking it would eventually get better.The pace of the movie is slow. Not in a "slow burn" way, just in a way where we spent the whole time wondering if it was a joke. The main character, Deborah, was either written so poorly as to be completely unconvincing, or just acted terribly. We expect a lot from our zombie films, especially from someone as prestigious as Mr. Romero, but this was just so upsettingly bad. The very end of the film has the best moment in it, and I won't describe it so it doesn't ruin anything for someone who might still want to give this one a go, but it is too little too late. In my opinion it's not a good use of your time.

So, over the past few years just about everybody in Hollywood has jumped on the "found footage" band wagon. This is George Romero's effort to get on board with the rest of the crowd. What none of the film makers on the band wagon have bothered to realize is that the dam thing has no wheels and it was never really going anywhere.There have been a few decent entries into the genre, they can occasionally be worth watching but in my experience that's very rarely the case. That said...maybe there was potential with Diary of the Dead. I would go so far as to say I can see what Romero was trying to do but ultimately, he missed the mark entirely. The acting is sub par, the story slower than a snail race and the special effects are just downright terrible. The latter is due to Tom Savini not being involved as head of special effects and not creating the signature gore that Romero's movies have become so famous for. If I remember correctly even Romero himself later admitted he knew going ahead without Savini was a mistake.Even if Savini had been present, sadly I still doubt this movie would be worthwhile. I could enter into a lot of theorizing as to what Romero could have done that would have made this better but the bottom line is the film is just below average. It's far to derivative of other found footage movies and so unworthy of even having Romero's name on it to bother thinking it could have been better. Okay, it's not the worst movie in history but it really is just a total disappointment for a horror fan and for a Romero fan. Do yourself a favor and just skip this one.

The weirdest part of this whole production is that very little is done to make it seem authentic. Everything is just too precise - I can't think of how else to describe it. It never felt like I was watching amateur footage. There was no sense of error.Things that make it less authentic: Everyone can use a gun and hit a zombie in the head (first try).The emotional responses from everyone are predictable or nonchalant to a lot of what's happening. The amount of death, blood and chaos - how is it that nobody is hysterical or unable to speak? The Professor. His first line may as well have been, "I am an English person!".The DIY horror movie (that the students were filming in the beginning) is so outdated and lame (a killer mummy). This sort of thing might still appear on a high-school drama series but it reveals how out of touch the writer is.Well-framed death/gore. For example, the Amish guy plunging a scythe through the front of his own head to kill the zombie behind him (while facing the camera) only to turn and show the zombie behind him dying and falling to the ground. A more obvious example is the reporter in the beginning being bitten and the camera being knocked to conveniently frame her zombie-damage.It wasn't until the barn that I noticed there was a musical score. Subliminally, I think this is why early on it just felt like a regular movie.The dialogue (given the format) was horrible. People aren't this well-spoken in reality. I don't remember anything specific but the witty replies from the girlfriend (of the cameraman) just didn't work.The narration in which the girlfriend explained the importance of the footage and her personal take on it all, just seemed stupid. From the moment they meet she's in complete opposition to what he's doing - he obviously dies later on.I didn't finish watching the movie. I honestly hate to say this but I became bored and didn't care what happened to anyone.