Zombie Diaries (2008)

This is a British Zombie film.  This is a “mockumentary” about an virus outbreak that has yet to hit England, but rest assured, it does.  It is set in present day.   The film itself is shot to look like it was filmed with a camcorder.   These are also the traditional “Romero” Zombies and not the modern running zombies.  Its a bit of an anthology, but read on for more……

Rating:

The opening of the film is when the outbreak hits, the second part is one month later(with another group of people), and the third part is a group in a farm house.

The first group is a camera crew doing a documentary on the “virus”.

The second group happens upon an empty town and is looking for supplies, 1 month after the outbreak.  They rummage through the small town and happen upon some zombies.

The third group is another group of young people who live in a farm house and kill the zombies that enter their land.

I really didn’t like this movie at all.  A Lot of the camera work is shaky, I know it is supposed to be, but it got pretty aggravating.  It’s not the shaky camera work like Cloverfield or 28 Weeks Later, where you can actually get an idea of whats going on. There was a  night vision cam  that was cool for about 2 minutes, then it got old…QUICK.  Overall, it was very messy and they should be whacked in the Gulliver for it.  The acting isn’t that great, it is not completely dreadful, but it’s not all that good either.  Looks to me they went to the local University and said, “Hey! who wants to be in a zombie flick?!”.  The film is very slow and really does not have very many zombies. It took  45 minutes for someone to FINALLY get bitten.  And when they did, it was so weak.   It was just a bit agonizing to sit through.  The pacing, the plot structure, and way it was shot were just dreadful.  And don’t get me started on the ending…..gross.(Not gross in a good, gory, zombie sort of way, gross as in…THIS SUCKS).

Well, the positives of the film were few and far between.  There is a cool gore scene in the beginning of the film, which made me go, “Alright, now here we go!”, yeah that fizzled quickly.  There were a few more scenes where zombies would attack that were alright, but nothing ground breaking or excellent.  There was a torture scene that was OK, but had no place in the film what so ever.

I felt mislead too.  Look at the cover art for the DVD….Look at it!  A guy in a biohazard vest with a few guns(one of them a shotgun), a ton of zombies surrounded by a destroyed city.  Looks pretty cool right….WRONG!!!  I didn’t have ANY expectations either…NONE!  Arrghh, it is just frustrating.

Do yourself a favor…skip this.  To me, they were trying to rip off Dairy of the Dead.  The premise of the film and the fact it was a “camcorder” shot film, brought me to this conclusion.  Personally, I liked Diary of the Dead, it is not the greatest Romero flick, but it is certainly better than this ‘Euro Trash’.  If you want a zombie movie, please don’t pick this one…please.  All of the Romero zombie flicks, Dawn of the Dead remake, Automaton Transfusion, and Severed:Forrest of the Dead are all much, much better than this.

But, if you do watch this and tell me about it…you are gonna get an “I told you so”