Diary of the Dead (2007)

Bad acting is always annoying but when you allow a bad actress to read a self-indulgent drawling voice over - teeth really start to grate. Doubly so if it's American. If the voice is in its early twenties and starts pointing out ham-fisted cultural observations in a world weary fashion, anger levels start to rise exponentially. Soon teeth start to clench and crack while fingernails slowly dig into armrests.

So then, how would you feel when you realise the voice over belongs to a girl who just finished editing a documentary.

A documentary about the complete and utter breakdown of civilisation as we know it, the end of the world. A documentary in which her own parents are filmed being shot and killed as she watches. A documentary where some of her friends become unwitting murderers while others are shown graphically committing suicide.

A documentary where all our worst nightmares come true and the dead rise again to walk the Earth.

You might think "Holy shit that sounds amazing, or moving, or gory. Or all of the above!"

You might, until she says "I've added some music. To scare you."

Then, you'd either burst out laughing and press eject or you'd waste the next hour and a half of your life watching George R. Romero's Diary of the Dead.

Before I break down this tremendous log of a movie into flushable chunks let me start by simply stating: Diary of the Dead is shit. Absolute unadulterated shit.

Just in case you are thinking of renting it, don't. It stinks like a shit in a microwave on full power. It is, by far, one of the shittiest movies I've seen in quite some time.

It is so shit I expected the actors to walk out halfway through.

When I say actors I mean 'cunts'. Because that's what they are, either for claiming they are actors or for knowing they can act and still taking part in this terrible affront to both cinema and logic.

At the heart of the movie is a simple premise; some film students happen to be shooting a movie when Romero's zombie crisis breaks out. One particularly hateful student decides to document the events on camera as they try to get to safety.

The fact that the movie is edited then introduced by his girlfriend - gives away the fact that he doesn't make it. Any sense of realism leaves shortly afterward with the line;

"I've added some music, to scare you."

In the movie world it is assumed that this scene is filmed after the crisis. So we must also assume that you the viewer will have been seriously affected by it, loved ones may have died. Then come back to life and then been killed by you. In a horrible way.
Sixty to seventy percent of your close friends will be dead or undead. Nowhere is safe. The home-guard and armed forces have given up protecting the public and turned to looting them for survival. Every TV channel and phone connection is out. Soon the power will be. It is literally the end of the world.

But you know what's really scary?

The creepy music on this shitty student documentary. 

Logically this is like saying that without 'spooky music' the footage of mass graves at Bergen-Belsen isn't really that unsettling. Or that without a pantomime DUN-DUN-DUUUHH live execution footage would probably be a bit of a laugh. 

This is the first of many Suspension Of Dis-belief Slip-ups, or SODS for short, that ruin the whole conceit.

Here is a list of just some of the silly SODS in Diary of the Dead:

1. "I've added music to scare you"
   
2. Everyone in the film.
   
3. The fact that the guy who is filming never stops filming, in fact he dies purely because he keeps filming rather than fighting.
   
4. Everything everyone does in the film.
5. The alcoholic Film tutor's 'Thesp' voice. So outrageous it would be more at home as a camp suit of armour called "Sir Knows-a-lot" in a children's cartoon.
6. The alcoholic Film tutor's speech on seeing too much killing in the war. He looks about fifty, and went to Eton so which war involving the British would that have been? 
7. The head smackingly bad line; "Shoot me, shoot me" from our film student when he finally catches one in the neck. He is gesturing to his dropped camera - not the gun. 
8. The awful, awful droning drawling voice over and stock footage montages on video culture that interrupt the mood and bounce you out of the film every ten minutes.
   
9. The abject lack of subtlety in delivering the message.
10. The alcoholic Film tutor arming himself with a bow and arrow because it's 'nicer' than a gun.
    
11. If the phones are out and the TV is out. Would myspace and YOU TUBE be working? Would anyone be logging on?
12. The farmer who gets bitten by a zombie from behind and swings his scythe up through his own head and into the zombies head as well, killing them both.
13. After everything that has happened and considering the scale of the personal and global tragedy that has unfolded, would you really bother editing a movie about it?
14. If you did, which is unlikely, would you sit there and choose which creepy music to add? Where would you do that? Why would you do that?
15. Just in case you forgot: "I've added music, to scare you"

There's plenty more, though you'll need to watch the film yourself if you want to spot them all.

Putting aside the absurd script, amateurish acting, non-story and the unoriginal and poorly executed conceit - there are a few good zombie deaths.

Most notably the crash cart paddles being applied to a zombie nurses head causing her eyes to boil and burst like poached eggs.

Also some good comedy zombies. The found footage of a kids birthday party for example; a clown shuffles into view, kids cheer. The Dad honks the clowns nose which promptly falls off, blood squirts out the nose hole, kids scream and then CoCo turns Dads neck into dogfood.

These parts are few and far between, maybe the worst crime on display here is that it's a zombie movie without many zombies. The best you could do is to get really drunk or stoned and press play fully expecting it to be the worst thing you've ever seen. 

The only thing that shuffles and scares here is the story and the quality of acting. Like the zombies, the movie is crying out for the one thing it really lacks; brains, braaainssss.

If Cloverfield has an ugly younger brother with learning difficulties who wears rollerskates with a grubby tutu and falls over a lot then shouts "Bingo" and shits himself - it is this film.