Diary of the Dead
- Thread starter Balbi
- Start date
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Quality.
Wookey
Muppet is not a slur
I saw this at the pictures the night before last, and I have to say I am still feeling resentful at the entrance money I handed over. Grr.
The main storyline is a gang of film majors out in the woods of Philidelphia making a low-budget mummy movie - when the dead start to rise, and attack the living. The cameraman/director from the mummy movie decides to document these strange, earth-shattering events whilst at the same time trying to traverse the back roads of the US and deliver his chums to their various homes.
The target in this Romero film, as 'commercialism' and 'The War on Terror' have been in previous outings, is 'The Media'. Specifically, he uses the multi-platform rolling news media of the web, the TV and the radio, as well as CCTV and mobile phone footage, to tell the story of the disintegration of society and the escape (or otherwise) of our film majors.
I have to say right from the off, that there is so much wrong with this film it's truly difficult to know where to start. The characterisations are one-dimensional, and cliched. The script is really bad, to the point where I was laughing at many of the lines purely because I'd paid £6.20 to get in and wasn't about to cry, but either emotion would have been a valid response to the clunky, cliched and tired dialogue.
The plot, such as it is, was utterly foreseeable, and became more and more frustrating the further the film went on, as it became apparent that the entire movie had little point to make other than -
!) Isn't there a lot of media nowadays?
2) Can this media really help us in an emergency??
3) Er...Something else....can't quite recall.
In other words, the very issues that Cloverfield managed to convey in about ten seconds, and scare the wits out of you at the same time, this film takes an hour and a half to say.
The acting ranges from US soap quality to truly awful, you can even see the vacant, mournful eyes and the strings being pulled - and I'm not talking about the zombies!!
There's a deaf Amish fella communicating with a chalk board half way through, which is little more than a grade-school comment on technology and the need thereof - but really he's only notable for the most inventive death in the film, involving a scythe. The fact that this death really isn't that inventive, just the most inventive of the film, should show us how taudry and uncreative the rest of the gore horror is throughout.
There aren't enough zombies.
Those zombies that were there, weren't presented in a scary way.
I jumped twice, slowly, and more out of guilt than any real fear. Kinda like 'Oh, go on then, I'll jump, seeing as you made the effort.'
The whole multi-media experience is clunkily conveyed, raises oodles of technical questions that won't go away (who's lighting this, how did you get the sound on that shot?) and over-all is about 8 years too late as a current and valid comment on society and where we are going.
I'm really gutted about this, I love the genre, and I love Romero, but that doesn't mean I'm daft enough to accept lame, lazy, poorly produced and premise-free film-making at any cost. What a crying shame for a film genre that has in the past been so inventive and thought-provoking.
I got the feeling that the title 'Diary of the Dead' came first, simply because of the alliteration - and the rest of the plot was then shoe-horned in to fit that title.
In which case, I suggest next time Romero does 'Dairy of the Dead' (cows rise up from the chiller cabinets to kill shoppers, as a comment on modern meat consumption), or 'Dowry of the Dead' (a Bollywoodesque zombie-musical in which a slaughtered wedding party rises up from the dead as a comment on arranged marriages) or maybe even 'Dustbin of the Dead', in which all the dead bin-men rise up and start recycling the living, as a comment of environmentalism and our wasting of the earth's resources.....
Save your money, really. Put it towards your children's education. With films like this on general release, they are going to need it.
The main storyline is a gang of film majors out in the woods of Philidelphia making a low-budget mummy movie - when the dead start to rise, and attack the living. The cameraman/director from the mummy movie decides to document these strange, earth-shattering events whilst at the same time trying to traverse the back roads of the US and deliver his chums to their various homes.
The target in this Romero film, as 'commercialism' and 'The War on Terror' have been in previous outings, is 'The Media'. Specifically, he uses the multi-platform rolling news media of the web, the TV and the radio, as well as CCTV and mobile phone footage, to tell the story of the disintegration of society and the escape (or otherwise) of our film majors.
I have to say right from the off, that there is so much wrong with this film it's truly difficult to know where to start. The characterisations are one-dimensional, and cliched. The script is really bad, to the point where I was laughing at many of the lines purely because I'd paid £6.20 to get in and wasn't about to cry, but either emotion would have been a valid response to the clunky, cliched and tired dialogue.
The plot, such as it is, was utterly foreseeable, and became more and more frustrating the further the film went on, as it became apparent that the entire movie had little point to make other than -
!) Isn't there a lot of media nowadays?
2) Can this media really help us in an emergency??
3) Er...Something else....can't quite recall.
In other words, the very issues that Cloverfield managed to convey in about ten seconds, and scare the wits out of you at the same time, this film takes an hour and a half to say.
The acting ranges from US soap quality to truly awful, you can even see the vacant, mournful eyes and the strings being pulled - and I'm not talking about the zombies!!
There's a deaf Amish fella communicating with a chalk board half way through, which is little more than a grade-school comment on technology and the need thereof - but really he's only notable for the most inventive death in the film, involving a scythe. The fact that this death really isn't that inventive, just the most inventive of the film, should show us how taudry and uncreative the rest of the gore horror is throughout.
There aren't enough zombies.
Those zombies that were there, weren't presented in a scary way.
I jumped twice, slowly, and more out of guilt than any real fear. Kinda like 'Oh, go on then, I'll jump, seeing as you made the effort.'
The whole multi-media experience is clunkily conveyed, raises oodles of technical questions that won't go away (who's lighting this, how did you get the sound on that shot?) and over-all is about 8 years too late as a current and valid comment on society and where we are going.
I'm really gutted about this, I love the genre, and I love Romero, but that doesn't mean I'm daft enough to accept lame, lazy, poorly produced and premise-free film-making at any cost. What a crying shame for a film genre that has in the past been so inventive and thought-provoking.
I got the feeling that the title 'Diary of the Dead' came first, simply because of the alliteration - and the rest of the plot was then shoe-horned in to fit that title.
In which case, I suggest next time Romero does 'Dairy of the Dead' (cows rise up from the chiller cabinets to kill shoppers, as a comment on modern meat consumption), or 'Dowry of the Dead' (a Bollywoodesque zombie-musical in which a slaughtered wedding party rises up from the dead as a comment on arranged marriages) or maybe even 'Dustbin of the Dead', in which all the dead bin-men rise up and start recycling the living, as a comment of environmentalism and our wasting of the earth's resources.....
Save your money, really. Put it towards your children's education. With films like this on general release, they are going to need it.
D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
The film is very disappointing according to trusted sources
They were not wrong, i love Zombie films, and Romero especially, but this was frankly dereritive and boring. From the father of the zombie film to this crap.
I am a massive fan of World War Z and love the way its done but have my fears about it being crammed into a single film.
I would much prefer a mini-series for TV which would give them much more time to encompass the whole thing.
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