George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead Review

April 30, 2008

This movie is getting very mixed reviews at the moment, with people seemingly under impressed with it on a whole I thought that I would give some of my more positive thoughts on the movie and why I actually found it to be quite enjoyable.

Firstly let me start by saying that I love the whole zombie genre in general, George A. Romero is all to familiar with it and I think he was trying to take a more modern direction with this movie. With frequent talk of ‘blogs’ and internet footage it all does feel very up to date but it can get a bit tongue in cheek and I’m not quite sure if that’s intentional or not! Personally I loved that little bit of humour injected into the movie, there were several scenes that had me laughing out loud, specifically the scenes back in the mansion with Ridley dressed as a mummy and the deaf character Samuel I think his name was.

There seems to be a bit of a craze in movies at the moment to film with a handheld camera, and whilst I’m not usually a big fan of this, when it’s done right it can be very cinematic. This definitely worked well in Diary of the dead and added to the whole feel of the movie making it seem almost realistic at times.

Whilst the horror element of the film didn’t really offer up anything particularly new or mind blowing in the way of scares it did have a very creepy feel to it and the special effects and makeup were done exceptionally well once again adding to the believability element of the whole film.

One thing I would say is that the main characters did lack likeability somewhat, the main guy Jason was completely lacking in any kind of personality and the rest of the cast weren’t much better at times. I guess the fact of the matter is that we go to see these kinds of movies more for the experience, the gore and the special effects than anything else nowadays but I’d like to see George A Romero’s next movie pay a little bit more attention to character development and plotlines as well as having kick ass graphics and cinematic experience.

If you are a fan of Zombie movies go and see this film, its worth watching for a few of the key scenes alone, you wont come out completely blown away by the movie I’m sure but you will have had a whole lot of fun watching it!