Review #123: Diary of the Dead (2007)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #9- Diary of the Dead (2007)

Okay, real talk for a moment: What are the odds that this was made to be intentionally bad? Because it's bad. It's REALLY bad. It's ticking every single box for bad horror cliches, bad found-footage cliches, and just bad movie cliches. It's amateurish in every way, from the writing to the acting to the cinematography to the basic freaking logistics of one scene leading into another, everything about this movie feels like it was made by someone making their first movie after watching The Blair Witch Project and not understanding what makes it good. BUT IT WAS WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY GEORGE ROMERO, so either he's had a serious decline in ability since Day of the Dead (which wouldn't surprise me, with how lackluster Land was), or he was intentionally trying to lampoon found-footage horror by making the worst one he possibly could.

I'll get this right out there: As a rule I don't like found-footage movies. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about them (there's a handful that I think were really good), I just think that the format engenders lazy filmmaking and in nearly every case, it's used as a crutch to make a cheap movie under the assumption that it'll be under less scrutiny than if it was made traditionally (which is patently false; presenting something in a format that implies reality should invoke MORE scrutiny, not less) so you end up with a ton of improvised dialogue, aimless blocking, and nonsensical framing devices to distract from the idea that somebody in-universe sat down and edited this footage together, and did it poorly.

So when this movie started out and it was a bunch of people who clearly don't know each other, are conflicted on literally every opinion that gets spouted from their mouths, and who seem oblivious to everything around them that isn't directly in front of the camera, I couldn't help but draw conclusions about Diary of the Dead five minutes into its runtime. The movie gets a bit of credit for working the cameraman's insistence on filming into the story (he rightfully assumes the zombie apocalypse is going to lack adequate documentation so he wants to capture the truth.... of this group of blank slates for some reason) but it loses just as much credit for making every single step of the way so incredibly amateur and stupid.

Like, seriously. In the first scene, despite ostensibly being seven days into a movie shoot, none of the characters seem to know the basic details of acting, filming, or what a movie scene even is. Numerous times zombies will be IN THE ROOM with the characters FOR SEVERAL MINUTES before the characters OR the zombies notice, because the zombies were juuuuuust outside of the frame. A character ACTUALLY SAYS "whoa, there's so many zombies" rather than actually show a big crowd of zombies. (That's right; the guy who wrote and directed Dawn of the Dead couldn't get more than like ten extras for a single shot of this movie. Again, I can't decide whether this is meant to be satire or not.) I'm not making any of this up.

Everyone out there: please stop using found-footage as an excuse to make a low-effort product. Just stop it.

Overall Rating: 2/10 CGI Zombies in a Pool

Best Bit of IMDB Trivia: "Begins on the same day as Night of the Living Dead (1968), although the setting has been updated to the present day." So, like... NOT the same day, then?