Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero, 2007): USA

Whether a fan of zombie films or not, I’m sure most people have heard of George Romero and his ‘of the dead’ titles. Diary of the Dead is sort of different than the other Romero titles, but not necessarily in a good way. Like Cloverfield or the Blair Witch Project, the main footage is shot from the point of view of a character in the movie with a camera, not a camera man not in the script. The film centers around a group of young film makers in the process of shooting some B mummy film for a school project, obviously zombies really start happening and their horror film quickly turns into a zombie documentary. Their zombie documentary is narrated by one of the surviving main characters for some reason.

What I liked:
The zombies appear fairly convincing in Diary of the Dead. The deaths are all brutal and well created but not too over the top… what am I saying? The deaths are so over the top in some cases that it‘s hard to believe even just a little bit. The first twenty minutes of the film were quite terrible to watch and then I realized this film has no hope of being good, so it quickly became so bad that it was funny. I was laughing out loud all the way until the end after that realization.

What I didn’t like:
I had been looking forward to Diary of the Dead long before I knew it would be playing in the SBIFF this year, I don’t know why. I’m not that big of a Romero fan, nor am I Gothic. The previews and teaser make the film seem sort of scary and startling, or at least sort of well made, I suppose that could be the reason for my anticipation. Diary of the Dead is none of those things though, I feel so let down. Cloverfield is the only film I have seen so far that has successfully mastered the camera as part of the film technique. Diary attempts a similar effect, but is so stupid and over the top that it doesn’t make sense. The ‘film makers’ are constantly and randomly editing their footage and uploading it to youtube while the narrator talks about some deeper meaning in this generations fascination with documentation, as if this generation was actually the first to document anything major. Another horrible part of Diary is the fact that there is more than one camera person. There are multiple shots were there is a second camera man standing around filming things in plain view of the main camera, it looks pretty terrible. The two camera operators often have conversations, which are weird back and forth interview sort of shots, not the least bit appealing on screen. Every aspect of the film was terrible. I could go on about all the technical aspects of how cliché, predictable and poorly made this film is, but I won’t, not now anyways.

Overall:
Diary of the Dead was not quite the worst film I saw this year at the SBIFF (Fix was), it at least kept me laughing for the most part. I don’t understand why no one has made an honestly good zombie film yet. 28 Weeks Later doesn’t count, that’s not zombies. George Romero needs to step it up if he wants the future of zombies to get anywhere. I voted the film a 5/5, but would actually rate it a 3/10.

-Keith.