Diary of the Dead

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 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.

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 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

This was quite a creepy film for the most part - the scene at the hospital was really creepy: the location, the build up and the pay off were all great.

Romero does a good job of showing the savagery of man. I think his vision is that we are not much different than the zombies as our humanity declines. He is also showing that the media and the government cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

It is a movie about zombies, and it has the usual excitement. Not a lot of gore, and the girl doesn't get her clothes ripped off, but exciting nevertheless.