Review: Diary of the Dead (2007)

Diary of the Dead

IMDB rate: 5,8

Genre: Zombie, Found Footage, Mockumentary

For those who followed me for a longer time, might remember that I once had the poster of Diary of the Dead as an header/logo thing for my blog. Strangely enough, I never watched the movie. Until now.

Not sure what to think of it really. It had good points, but I think it contained more bad points. It's a George A. Romero movie, aka the king of zombies, and well, it wasn't much good in my opinion. I wouldn't say that his zombie movies become less entertaining though, I really liked Land of the Dead (2005) so no bad things about his recent movies. 

I love the found footage genre, it's an amazing addition to the scaring effect I think. Zombies are scary, sure. But the hand camera brings an extra scare to it. It's more unexpected I think, also the movie style is a bit messier which can lead to nice effects (unless they're too shaky to see what the f is going on). 

So on the hand camera aspect of this movie, great thing to do! Only makes it better for me!

What's wasn't very good about this movie was the acting and the script. It was a terrible combination with unbelievable moments and terrible reactions of actors. It was unbelievable at every point possible.

When their friends got killed before them they react way too neutral. Especially the girl is annoying, she keeps repeating herself while mocking her boyfriend. I know that he's a dick, but stop repeating yourself dammit! Also, be less mocking towards him, really uncool.

 We see these types of people in every found footage movie; the ones who need to keep filming to document. Sure, that's a cool thing to do but I'm very sure that even those people have boundaries. 

For example this camera dude. At first he kept reloading his batteries, while there were screaming people in the hospital + a dead turning girl was in the room with him and he's only whining about his battery. The second time his friend is attacked by a zombie, and he doesn't even try to help her. He just keeps filming calmly while she almost gets bitten. Why the f* are people still friends with this miserable person? The third time he got chased by a zombie and he got bitten, simply because his documentary was more important than his girlfriend or his safety.

I like that they kept the slow walking zombie thing in it, you would think that people have better surviving changes with it but these people all seem to be really stupid that they can't walk fast enough without getting bitten. At some points though the zombies reached their victims a bit too fast, considering that in one case he walked from the forest to the house, into the bathroom which even has the possibility of being upstairs. Their friends were a bit too lazy to shut to door apparently.

Diary of the Dead isn't specifically a bad movie, it's worth at least one watch but further one it's quite standard and predictable. The acting isn't much good and neither was the script. The things they say are lame and quite stupid for students. I didn't really dislike it, but neither did I like it. 

My personal rate: 5,5/10