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.
