Diary of the Dead

Synopsis:
A bunch of film students are in the midst of making their own Horror Movie... when strange things start happening around the world and the dead start coming back to life.
The group, along with their Teacher then end up on a road trip, trying to escape and survive... all the while the student cameraman of the group films as they go.


Review:
Hmm... odd one this.

Even though Romero won the Critics Award for this film, it was slammed by critics and fans alike.

The major problem with the film is that it feels like a cash-in affair, trying to utilise the Found Footage Genre, but it doesn't really do it very well at all.

The biggest fault with the execution of choice of style, is the casting.
Romero has seen fit to go with unknowns again, with exception to Shawn Roberts who is abysmal at best anyway... and Romero pretty much seems to have given a free reign to the young "actors" in terms of how the film plays out. Bad move seeing as none of them seem to have any idea what they're doing.
This film is highly amateur in atmosphere, even more so than Night...

I actually had a thought while watching, which I feel is a bit sacrilegious toward George A Romero... is that the film feels almost like something Uwe Boll would spew out. One film that sprung to mind was House Of The Dead, one of the worst films I've ever seen.
Diary appears to have similar action to it. Meaning, whenever something happens, the cast turn toward the camera while being chomped and the Zombies themselves, whenever they get a gruesome injury, tend to turn and "showcase" their wounds to the camera.
This film is by far the most exploitative in the series. But it does it without any actual style, sadly.

The good points about the film though, is that the filmmakers have gone back to basics and seem to be experimenting again, which is something that was lacking from the clinical Land Of The Dead.
With the movie in general being so different from the others, it makes it feel strangely fresh and new, even with all its faults.
There's also a few scenes of genuine scares and jumps, even though sadly again, the film is lacking in spooky atmosphere.


The general writing is also pretty lacking. There seems to be little actual plot, or even any story exactly going on. It's really more just a made-for-the-sake-of-it movie.



The acting, as I said is pretty dire tbh.
Shawn Roberts, Joshua Close, Michelle Morgan, Joe Dinicol, Scott Wentworth and Phillip Riccio are our main group of screamers... none of which are worthy really to be expanded on in this review.
They're wooden, carry little emotion, have very little charisma and none of them are believable within the endless series of gruesome shenanigans.

Best on show though is RD Reid as a Deaf-And-Dumb Amish man. Sadly, he doesn't last long.



The effects and action as such, as I said, are all exploitations in what can be achieved by having teens screaming at the camera, Zombies doing the same thing... and sadly, the filming style of having the student holding the camera somehow managing to capture every single gory blood soaked injury perfectly amongst the chaos really removes any reality, tension, atmosphere or believability from the scenes.