El diario de los muertos

I watch a lot of movies. Not that I'm an expert or anything but I have a pre-paid pass that means I can see as many movies I want at the cinema for a year.

And with that pass I watch everything. To the end.

I've seen a lot of terrible movies and a lot of good movies but Diary of the Dead was one of a very few that I have actually walked out on my own decision.

Being a George AR fan naturally I expected good things. Land of the Dead was enjoyable enough, I liked it. Bought it. I own all the others and I consider the original three to be horror masterpieces, but masterpiece this movie is not.

Plagued with dire acting, over-preachy inconsistent plot riddled with cringeworthy clichés, I could honestly find no good qualities watching this. Hated the characters(whiny, emotionless, clichéd, students) who just did not convince me that this was real at all. In fact the camera style, also similarly used in REC and Cloverfield is supposed to install a sense of realism but everything felt incredibly staged, from actors to scenarios and really detached me from the whole experience.

And with little action altogether(Judging from the 60mins I saw) it felt more like a film about a group of students pretty standard psychophysical debate set during a zombie invasion. In reality it should have been students trying to survive during a zombie invasion but with such a lack of emotion from every character it seemed like this was just a pretty average day.

All in all this is definitely one of the worst movies I've seen in recent years and has truly made me believe that George AR isn't just having a bad streak, but may be going completely senile.

However I may watch it if it ever comes my way, some people are giving it good ratings and now I want to see if it changes into a completely different movie after the 60th minute because the pile of pants I watched doesn't even deserve a vote or even a damn entry into IMDb for being such a half-assed, poor excuse for a film.

While filming a horror movie of mummy in a forest, the students of the University of Pittsburgh Jason Creed (Joshua Close), Ridley Wilmot (Phillip Riccio), Francine Shane (Megan Park), Tony Ravelo (Shawn Roberts), Elliot Stone (Joe Dinicol), Mary Dexter (Tatiana Maslany), Elliot "Gordo" Thorson (Chris Violetti) and Tracy Thurman (Amy Lalonde) and their professor Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) hear on the TV news that the dead are awaking and walking. Ridley and Francine decide to leave the group, while Jason heads to the dormitory of his girlfriend Debra Monahan (Michelle Morgan). She does not succeed in contacting her family and they travel in Mary's van to the house of Debra's parents in Scranton, Pennsylvania. While driving her van, Mary sees a car accident and runs over a highway patrolman and three other zombies trying to escape from them. Later the religious Mary is depressed, questioning whether the victims where really dead, and tries to commit suicide, shooting herself with a pistol. Her friends bring her to a hospital where they realize that the dead are indeed awaking and walking and they need to fight to survive while traveling to house of Debra's parents.

I do not say that "Diary of the Dead" is disappointing, but indeed there is nothing new in this movie "à la The Blair Witch Project (or Cloverfield)". The story is a kind of "documentary" of George A. Romero's trilogy, with the cinema student Jason Creed shooting the movie with his handy camera. Unfortunately there is a total lack of credibility in this unreasonable character that keeps shooting his movie even in the most weird or dangerous situation for himself or for his group of friends. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I had no idea that this existed and I seem to be in the minority here as I didn't think it was too bad for what it is, though it's a bit polished for a George Romero film. Crude was usually his style. I don't recall liking the previous one, Land of the Dead, which seemed ridiculous, but it's been a while. I also have no idea if I've seen his final film, Survival of the Dead, as we've seen an awful lot of walking dead movies since he got this ball rolling in 1968. This has a dumb premise of some students, with cameras they won't let go of, filming a mummy movie when they hear about people dying and eating each other and seem so shocked and surprised. Don't these people ever go to the movies?! The acting's not bad here and there is some creativity, though yet another person running around filming everything is, as usual, beyond belief. Nothing special, but it held my attention.

I really dislike the whole "found footage" genre, and I wish it would finally die. Luckily, this movie doesn't quite fit 100% into that genre, but it's close enough that I got fairly annoyed. Diary of the Dead is basically about some film school kids documenting the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, and thus it's more of a fake documentary than anything else. Unlike some movies shot in this style, one of the main themes involves criticism of the obsessive need to document everything rather than actually participating. There are also some shots at censorship, social media, and the propaganda potential for the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, Diary of the Dead feels like a watered-down reboot of his classic franchise, modernized and targeted at teenagers, with the requisite group of stereotypical dumb ass characters found in every direct-to-video slasher movie. The social criticism is blatant and lacks subtlety, and Romero resorts to outright lecturing the audience. I generally agree with Romero, but I prefer his older movies. He's never been particularly subtle, but this is just too overt and generic for my taste. He comes off as having been inspired by soulless ripoffs of his own work.

It's one of Romero's worst movies, but that still makes it better than much of the crap that litters the horror landscape. Hopefully, if we get any more movies from Romero, they'll be as uncompromising and powerful as his earlier work, but it seems as though Romero has had some real problems getting funding. Watered-down, mainstream Romero is better than no Romero, but it's difficult to recommend. This may be a good introduction to his material for younger audiences, though.

I liked this one quite a bit, more than I thought I would actually as I'd been expecting a fairly low budget/cheesefest of a movie. If you don't analyze anything too much this ends up being a fun ride though; following a group of collage film students who are shooting their own low budget horror film and inadvertently begin documenting the early days of a zombie apocalypse. It becomes a bit of a road trip movie with ravenous walking corpses at every stop and filmmaker "Jason" documenting first-person style the horrors they witness in an obsessive and unflinching manner. Even as his friends die he keeps filming.

The story is decent as are the special effects, I mean this ain't' no 'Walking Dead' and it is very much a B movie but the zombie kills are fun and unique; the melting head covered in acid comes to mind and the opening scene at the hospital is also really good.

Horror king George A Romero definitely has a style and as writer-director here, if you're a fan of the genre this is worth checking out. 10.13