Diary of the Dead
Plotline: A bunch of college students are making a film out in the woods when news comes through that the dead are returning back to life. The filmmaker involved in the student film can't resist taking advantage of the strange events by documenting them with his camera.
Scariness factor: Eh. Nothing special.
Gross-Out Factor: Medium. Either that or I'm just finally getting immune to it.
Complaints: Ok yeah. The whole "happening to be filming something when bad horror-movie shit goes down that you catch, coincidentally, on film" motif has gotten old old old. Mostly because NOBODY manages to do it well. Diary of the Dead was, alas, no exception. Here's my problem: I hate the self-consciousness of it. Just fucking do it. Don't keep having characters explain why it is that the stupid idiot supposedly "filming" continues to film through the whole course of the events that take place. Just do it. Otherwise I end up wanting to punch you in the throat every five minutes. Now granted, Romero's movie was a commentary ON media, so I understand that these weren't just the average "justification of why the main character would be filming instead of helping a friend who's getting killed"-type moments. But even so, the commentary in this movie was RIDICULOUSLY heavy-handed, especially for Romero. I mean, sweet jesus, the characters explain like 1500 times throughout the movie that it all IS a commentary on the media. And to me, well, don't keep TELLING me that. Just SHOW me for god's sake. Let the events speak to it instead of getting paranoid that no one's gonna get it and inserting in a bunch of characters and narration to heavy-handedly explain it to me.
High Points: It's got zombies in it.
Overall: Yeah, I dunno. It was too clumsy of a commentary on the media, and the self-consciousness of the documentary-style got old really quickly. (I mean, who REALLY REALLY would choose to keep filming instead of helping out a friend getting attacked. I mean, REALLY??) Chalk it up as a take-it-or-leave-it film.
Grade: C
Labels: C movies
2 Comments:
This movie gave me nightmares. I'm a huge zombie fan and I love George Romero. I was hoping you would have liked it more haha. But ya the zombies themselves, as you saw, were very classic and slow moving, that part clearly did not scare me. It was more of the psycho-social aspect on it that tripped me out.
May I ask... what zombie movies DO scare you? hmm?
You may CERTAINLY ask. The new Dawn of the Dead scares the crap out of me. As does 28 Days Later. As does Night of the Living Dead. (I feel like I'm missing a ton more, but those are some good examples for now.) I like the fast-moving zombies. Though I'm totally cool with old-school ones as well (like in Night of the Living Dead which I still think is totally creeps despite the fact that everything moves super-slow).
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