The Zombie Diaries

Being a child of the 80's I grew up on horror, everything from Freddy to Pinhead (and of course my favorite, Jason). I remember being 7 years old and watching Dawn of the Dead, it freaked me out, I had nightmares for weeks, even seeing it when I was 25 it still freaked me out. After that I became a zombie freak, Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, Day of the dead, Return of the living dead and more recently the 28 films became some of my favorites. Seeing the trailer for this film I thought it looked great, I knew it was a low budget film but this didn't bother me, seeing that some of my favorite films are low budget "b" films. When I saw it in the store I grabbed it and payed $14 (even though i usually buy used films much cheaper) for it seeing that I was already interested in the film and it was attractively packaged. That night I put it in kicked back with a beer and anticipated some awesome zombie fun. Boy was I wrong, this film was simply horrible, the acting was poor the story was non-existent and the quality was straight garbage, seemingly an attempt at a blairwitch type video camera affect and a total copy of the concept off diary of the dead (which wasn't great but is eons better than this), but with no plot. This film is unworthy of even existing, I own over 600 films and and love everything from evil dead to good fellas, night of the comet to American beauty and I can honestly tell you that i feel like destroying this film because it is a disgrace to my collection, avoid it at all cost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen many of these flicks over the past year. Some were pretty good (Cloverifeld, REC), some were bad (Diary of the Dead) but this lesser known entry is by far the most realistic. Shot for a much lower budget than the other films, it shows that you don't need a multi million dollar budget to produce an effective horror film.

I wouldn't go so far as saying its the best zombie film ever made. That honor goes to Night of the Living Dead, but The Zombie Diaries is definitely the most realistic ever made.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Brit-made movie and look forward to the next film from these guys.

I'd been warned about this movie by several of my friends, but I was determined to accept it as a challenge to see if I could get through it.

Now, looking back at it, I wish I would've listened to them. I do agree with several of the reviews that the idea of the film sounded promising. Lost video diaries documenting the escalation of the zombie apocalypse sounds like something that would be a fresh change from the rest of the zombie genre.

Unfortunately, the acting and the dialogue doesn't hold up to the expectations you have for it. I'm not a big fan of the hand-held camera style. It's too jumpy and too hard to focus on any one thing. The use of night vision, while supposed to add an eerie feel to it, just makes the jumps and camera glitches all the more apparent.

The acting was mediocre at best and I didn't think that the special effects and makeup was up to snuff either. Could've been good, but unfortunately, it wasn't.

The Zombie Diaries was intriguing in the very early going. It had a low budget realism that actually worked for a little bit. I remember one scene early on where a character had trouble lining up a single close range rifle shot against a lone zombie. There's more realism in that than most movies that feature over-the-shoulder head shots on moving targets from 50 yards away. Unfortunately, that's about the best thing I have to say about this movie.

The Zombie Diaries consists of three separate stories that occur during a zombie epidemic in England. The stories intersect later on in the movie, and that's really about all you can say about it in a review. There are numerous characters in the various stories- so many in fact, that it's hard to identify one from the other after awhile. The virtually non-stop cinema verite shaky camera will drive you mad and makes it impossible to follow the storyline they're trying to set up. This is especially true during the nighttime scenes, and there are several of those. With all apologies to my British friends- the actors in this movie are so British that they're nearly incomprehensible.

So, if you've seen Zombie Diaries, you can scratch it off your list and move on. If you haven't, you're not missing much. With all that being said, I will say that there's a basis here for a much better movie. I would be interested if someone gave it another go with a script rewrite and some improvements in the basic cinematography.

It's a shame I did't see the bad reviews here before watching this stinker. I only saw good reviews. Here's another bad one.

OK, where do I start with how bad this movie is. OK, the world is full of zombies. They come out at night. What would you do when night time comes. Answer: Hide in a house and fortify it. What do these egg heads do? They go out at night with very little light and surprise, surprise, run into a bunch of zombies. Jeesh. For crying out loud. How stupid do these people have to be? Next. If you have a gun, where do you shoot the zombies. Answer: In the head. Here, they are not shot in the head. Even worse, there is no bullet hole / wound. It's like they couldn't afford to pay SFX guys.

Acting - horrible and dull. Story line - ditto. Zombies: more of the same - dull and boring.

Do yourself a favour and save yourself from total boredom and see any of the classic zombie movies because this one is a stinker.