Diary of the Dead

[Malathis]

FINALLY! A positive review! If you check imdb's message board or Rotten Tomatoes, you'll find a lot of hate for this film (Ebert liked it, though)

[Jon Mercer]

FINALLY! A positive review!

Forgive the judges, the system is hardly perfect.

[MalpasoFan]

Diary Of The Dead got a limited release here in Philadelphia and it came and went in a week. I didn't get to see it and my wife wasn't interested (her own words: "they're all the same"). While she may be right to some extent, there's a bit of freshness and spirit that makes Diary worth seeing. First off, you should know that this is a standalone film and not chronologically the fifth installment. This film functions like a sister to the original Night when the zombie outbreak first happens and no one knows what to make of it. College students are making a pseudo horror documentary film and they're suddenly immersed in zombie fodder all while the camera's rolling.
You can tell George Romero's creative juices are flowing more here than in the rather ordinary Land Of The Dead. That's not to say that this comes even close to the original Dead trilogy (Day Of The Dead being my favorite). George still tends to write rather broad dialogue. The main character annoys you in his overzealous ambition to keep the camera rolling even while his friends/crew are attacked in front of him and the film falls apart in the last 15 minutes. The good stuff is the zombie kills. There's not a lot, but what's there is original and ingenious. I guarantee you haven't seen these zombie kills anywhere else but here (I'm not going to say what they are 'cause they're that clever). After this, I really don't see George making anymore zombie films. I think he's covered everything he could and if this is his last, he's going out on a good note.

[barnaclelapse]

See, I've heard that from a lot of fans.

It's just critics who seem to be getting their hate on for it.

The really interesting thing to me though is that a lot of the people who absolutely despised Land of The Dead seem to love this movie and regard it in their minds as what the 4th Dead film should have been.

I personally wouldn't go that far, but I will say that Diary struck me as a somewhat more focused film in terms of pacing and storytelling than Land.

[Canius]

Believe it or not I liked Diary more than Land..

It's just that I could get a lot of points that Romero was making. Stuff like "Cameraman's responsibility.." and "seeing Normaliacy become Chaos" and stuff like that..

I hate how "Media" makes movies out to "suck" when some "Bad" movcies are kinda OK...