The Zombie Diaries

If you're going to make a film that doesn't have much in the way of a clear, evident story or plot-progression, then you better make a story that has some vividly drawn characters. Unfortunately, Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett's Zombie Diaries has neither, and only serves as an exhaustive retread through lackluster horror filmmaking, peddled by the Dimension Extreme, the direct-to-DVD label mostly comprised of low-budget horror titles that fail to bring anything new or interesting to the game. As much as that seems to be an oversimplification, it's worth noting that the several films I've sought out from this label have all been met with some sort of butting disappointment.

The film bears a triptych structure, focusing on three different groups of people during an impending epidemic/viral outbreak and shows it all come together at the conclusion of the film. The film's first chapter, "The Outbreak," starts in London and details the paranoia and the fear circulating about the Asian countries experiencing a far-reaching and lethal virus outbreak. While it hasn't reached the Western Europe or United States areas at this time, the lax response from Asia's government suggests that it could in the near future, making the residents of London admittedly jumpy and unsettled. In this chapter, we follow a documentary crew's research and documentation of the viral outbreak in the countryside, unbeknownst to them they'll experience the hell first hand and won't just to be talking about the epidemic while filming themselves.

The second chapter, titled "The Scavengers," follows a young couple, an American man and a foreign woman, who are traveling in their car, equipped with a rifle, looking for food to ration and radio parts in order to send communication signal with the optimism they'll get rescued during this time. This chapter should logically be the most suspenseful, given the immediate idea, the circumstance, and the fact that, by this point, we're already in the second act of the film. Sadly, little occurs here that makes for an interesting setup, and by this time, the monotony and ugliness of the hand-held-camera really begins to takes a toll, and as somebody who scarcely complains about such a thing, this is when you know things aren't going very well for this film, aesthetically speaking.

Finally, the final chapter, titled "The Survivors," details a large group of uninfected souls who have found solace on a farm. They spend much of their time strategizing their next move and checking out surrounding areas to assure their safety is long-term and not a short-term illusion. In addition, their time is spending warding off large bouts of zombies along with fighting about how to assure their own safety. Again, this is another potentially riveting portion of the film brought down by the filming techniques of Gates and Bartlett and the overall repetition of the film and the lack of character investment.

The Zombie Diaries has an intriguing structure, but little to back it up in terms of achieving any kind of narrative success. Despite having three stories, its story and story-progression isn't the least bit evident, the characters remain flat and vague, almost as if they're mannequins given the ability to talk and move, and the entire aesthetic that Gates and Bartlett hope will achieve success only results in mounting tedium for the film's already short runtime.

Starring: Russell Jones, Sophia Ellis, and James Fisher. Directed by: Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett.

Zombie films have been all the rage in the past few years. George Romero has returned to the fold, making new entries in his long-running "living dead" series; different countries have been putting their own invigorating spins on the genre, like Spain's sublime REC. THE ZOMBIE DIARIES is a distinctly British spin on the genre, but sadly it turns out to be an almost worthless exercise in box-ticking that had the potential to be so much more.

First off – the false advertising. The DVD box shows a scene of gun-toting survivors battling a huge horde of the undead as London burns. It looks like some big budget mayhem is due, in the same vein as 28 WEEKS LATER. Once you begin watching the film, you quickly realise the budget is in the same region as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – i.e. this is a shot on video film with a handful of actors and never more than half a dozen zombies on screen at once. I didn't mind the budget constraints too much, as at least realism is often heightened in such productions.

And, indeed, the film starts off on a strong footing. The zombie outbreak is vaguely explained with just the right level of detail, and there's mucho atmosphere building as a quartet of documentary filmmakers find themselves in a seemingly abandoned rural farmhouse. All the locals have vanished, and just what is making that thumping behind the bedroom door? The answer is utterly horrifying and genuinely scary, an exceptional bit of well-directed shock that promises so much more than what comes later. I could even forgive the poor acting.

Unfortunately, the film then proceeds to fall apart. Utterly. One of the biggest problems is the stupidity of the script, which is aimless and derivative. For some nonsensical reason, the film cuts between different groups of survivors and we never get to know or care about any of them. Stupid non-linear twists are made which make trying to piece together what's going on even more of a chore, and one that's frankly not worth bothering with. For the rest of the film, it's just seeing people shooting zombies. Oh, and there's a twist in which some of the survivors turn out to be bad eggs themselves – like we haven't seen that one done before.

I didn't have a problem with the lack of budget or scope. The special effects are pretty good, even if they have a Halloween-party look to them. The actors are diabolical, but that's a flaw that's easily overlooked. It's the pointless, plot less story that drags this one down, and the need to repeat endless boring "action" sequences. The film should have stuck with the initial characters and perhaps presented an under siege NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD scenario instead – that would have cut down on budget costs and could have been genuinely tense, if derivative. Instead, THE ZOMBIE DIARIES turns out to be one of the most disappointing zombie films in recent history.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I read the description on the back of the movie, it sounded like I would be watching a WWZ-inspired series of interviews, or a news crew following some military forces. Instead, what I ended up with was a confusing and bland set of boring characters in a frankly underwhelming disaster. The most important things I noticed: 1. The film gives you no reason whatsoever to care about any of the characters. None of them are portrayed as anything other than arguing meatbags. 2. I really have no idea why they make a big deal about these zombies, or why there was an outbreak, since they seem to spend most of the movie standing in one spot waiting for their cue to collapse from a gunshot. 3. The movie didn't even use blanks for the film. The gunshots were added in after the shooting, leaving you with quite boring gunfire that didn't even feel like they were killing anything at all. I even heard the pistol sound effect from Killing Floor used for their handgun!

The movie ends abruptly and with little to no real impact, so I guess it stayed pretty level for the whole film. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew what it was, and I wouldn't recommend anything more than a day rent.

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.