Diary of the Dead
Posted: July 9th, 2008, 15:28
Diary of the Dead
This seems to have come and gone quietly at the cinema, with no real opinions given either way. That was good, as I had no expectations.
Romero claims that it was coincidence that Diary of the Dead, a shaky-cam entry into his zombie movie series, was released just after Cloverfields. I believe him, but even so, it's been done before (See: The Zombie Diaries). The story is pretty standard as zombie movies go, group of students get caught up in the zombie apocalypse and jump in their Winnebago and try to get home.
There're some nice bits here. The footage the characters gather from the internet is cut in, and adds some quite believable (but slightly disjointed) relief from the main story. There's some great incidental characters too - they meet a deaf Amish bloke who seems none too fazed by the whole thing, and grimly blows up zombies with dynamite and hacks them with a scythe, while casually communicating via a little chalk board. An encounter with a bunch of inner city gangers who have holed up is quite refreshing too.
There's also a lot of nothing. The zombies don't get a lot of screentime, and there isn't the huge thronging crowds of them that makes zombie films so ominous. As usual, the characters who die do so because they're stupid. I might also add that I don't like the home movie style of film. It's far too narrow a view, from a story perspective, for my liking - you just don't get any sense of scale.
Despite being a big fan of Romero and zombie movies, this was pretty run of the mill. The story was well trodden and pretty watery, and the injects of some nice human encounters are about the only thing worth watching for. The effects are decent enough, so the suspense of disbelief is never ruined, but so much is concentrated on the frankly boring main characters that I never built up much of a suspense anyway.
I'd rate it a six brains out of ten.
This seems to have come and gone quietly at the cinema, with no real opinions given either way. That was good, as I had no expectations.
Romero claims that it was coincidence that Diary of the Dead, a shaky-cam entry into his zombie movie series, was released just after Cloverfields. I believe him, but even so, it's been done before (See: The Zombie Diaries). The story is pretty standard as zombie movies go, group of students get caught up in the zombie apocalypse and jump in their Winnebago and try to get home.
There're some nice bits here. The footage the characters gather from the internet is cut in, and adds some quite believable (but slightly disjointed) relief from the main story. There's some great incidental characters too - they meet a deaf Amish bloke who seems none too fazed by the whole thing, and grimly blows up zombies with dynamite and hacks them with a scythe, while casually communicating via a little chalk board. An encounter with a bunch of inner city gangers who have holed up is quite refreshing too.
There's also a lot of nothing. The zombies don't get a lot of screentime, and there isn't the huge thronging crowds of them that makes zombie films so ominous. As usual, the characters who die do so because they're stupid. I might also add that I don't like the home movie style of film. It's far too narrow a view, from a story perspective, for my liking - you just don't get any sense of scale.
Despite being a big fan of Romero and zombie movies, this was pretty run of the mill. The story was well trodden and pretty watery, and the injects of some nice human encounters are about the only thing worth watching for. The effects are decent enough, so the suspense of disbelief is never ruined, but so much is concentrated on the frankly boring main characters that I never built up much of a suspense anyway.
I'd rate it a six brains out of ten.
