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The Zombie Diaries (2007)
"The Zombie Diaries" is the latest film to take advantage of the "documentary" style films that have been released as of late such as "Diary of the Dead", "Cloverfield", and many others. Mix that in with the horror subgenre that has been used and abused more than any other (the zombie film) and you have a movie that really had the deck stacked against it before you even watch it. These types of films are starting to become a dime a dozen and most of them are disappointing to the audience. To be honest I find it strange considering that these films are attempting to bring realism to the film by ignoring logic and common sense. Although you have to be able to suspend belief somewhat when watching horror films and zombie films in particular but sometimes these films really reaching with what they are trying to do. Every time I watch new zombie films I'm hoping for it to blow my socks off like many have years ago, unfortunately though they end up falling flat. "The Zombie Diaries" shows promise at times, but it's one that most likely will be forgotten in a pile of other "dead" films if you will.
"The Zombie Diaries" is a documentary style movie which allows you to view the footage from several groups of survivors. Each group has their own issues and problems and must cope with them, along with the living dead to survive. Obviously this is all being shown in the view of one of the group members who are operating their own video camera. We see their journey of survival from beginning to bloody end asking the question if anyone will even survive in the end, or if that would be the case would they even want to?
Like I said earlier, these films have to deal with all types of challenges and they usually have to do it on a small budget. I'm not sure of the exact figure of this film but I know it's not particularly high. With that being said I thought they did a good job with what they probably had available and the movie seemed to be shot around that. Examples in the film of this were how the zombies seemed to be hidden most of the time therefore less makeup needed for wondering zombies. Although there are scenes in which the zombies are in plain site the pacing of the movie makes you wait a bit to even get into it. There's a decent amount of blood in the movie but the gore is very little to speak of. It does include some entrails here and there but to be honest it doesn't really stack up to most zombie films in the gore department.
Another issue I had with the movie was the fact that just about every character was interchangeable and completely paper thin. On top of that most of them were simply uninteresting and the movie suffers big time from this. It's been said many times but if you simply don't care about characters in a zombie film then why in the hell would you be watching it in the first place? Although I can find other reasons why I like zombie films it's really hard to make a good one unless you have that factoring in somewhere along the line.
I do have to give credit to Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett on a decent script as I think this one would really come off well on paper. I just don't think that they had the budget they needed to make the film that they truly wanted to make. But if this is exactly the film they wanted to make then it's not the best attempt. But with all of that being said I do actually think that they were able to create some creepy scenes in the film. They are few and far between but I'd say that two specifically were particularly creepy. If only the movie could have held that tone for longer it would have been more effective but unfortunately it couldn't.
Overall I would say that this one may be worth your time if you're talking about a rental, but I would save my money if you were thinking about picking this one up for your collection. I would even say buyer beware to zombie enthusiasts out there as I'm sure you'll be disappointed in this one as well. Trust me when I tell you that you probably already have a ton of mediocre zombie movies clogging up your DVD shelves……you don't need another. AVOID.
Rating - *1/2
-Ed Demko
