The Zombie Diaries

Being a child of the 80's I grew up on horror, everything from Freddy to Pinhead (and of course my favorite, Jason). I remember being 7 years old and watching Dawn of the Dead, it freaked me out, I had nightmares for weeks, even seeing it when I was 25 it still freaked me out. After that I became a zombie freak, Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, Day of the dead, Return of the living dead and more recently the 28 films became some of my favorites. Seeing the trailer for this film I thought it looked great, I knew it was a low budget film but this didn't bother me, seeing that some of my favorite films are low budget "b" films. When I saw it in the store I grabbed it and payed $14 (even though i usually buy used films much cheaper) for it seeing that I was already interested in the film and it was attractively packaged. That night I put it in kicked back with a beer and anticipated some awesome zombie fun. Boy was I wrong, this film was simply horrible, the acting was poor the story was non-existent and the quality was straight garbage, seemingly an attempt at a blairwitch type video camera affect and a total copy of the concept off diary of the dead (which wasn't great but is eons better than this), but with no plot. This film is unworthy of even existing, I own over 600 films and and love everything from evil dead to good fellas, night of the comet to American beauty and I can honestly tell you that i feel like destroying this film because it is a disgrace to my collection, avoid it at all cost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen many of these flicks over the past year. Some were pretty good (Cloverifeld, REC), some were bad (Diary of the Dead) but this lesser known entry is by far the most realistic. Shot for a much lower budget than the other films, it shows that you don't need a multi million dollar budget to produce an effective horror film.

I wouldn't go so far as saying its the best zombie film ever made. That honor goes to Night of the Living Dead, but The Zombie Diaries is definitely the most realistic ever made.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Brit-made movie and look forward to the next film from these guys.

If you're going to make a film that doesn't have much in the way of a clear, evident story or plot-progression, then you better make a story that has some vividly drawn characters. Unfortunately, Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett's Zombie Diaries has neither, and only serves as an exhaustive retread through lackluster horror filmmaking, peddled by the Dimension Extreme, the direct-to-DVD label mostly comprised of low-budget horror titles that fail to bring anything new or interesting to the game. As much as that seems to be an oversimplification, it's worth noting that the several films I've sought out from this label have all been met with some sort of butting disappointment.

The film bears a triptych structure, focusing on three different groups of people during an impending epidemic/viral outbreak and shows it all come together at the conclusion of the film. The film's first chapter, "The Outbreak," starts in London and details the paranoia and the fear circulating about the Asian countries experiencing a far-reaching and lethal virus outbreak. While it hasn't reached the Western Europe or United States areas at this time, the lax response from Asia's government suggests that it could in the near future, making the residents of London admittedly jumpy and unsettled. In this chapter, we follow a documentary crew's research and documentation of the viral outbreak in the countryside, unbeknownst to them they'll experience the hell first hand and won't just to be talking about the epidemic while filming themselves.

The second chapter, titled "The Scavengers," follows a young couple, an American man and a foreign woman, who are traveling in their car, equipped with a rifle, looking for food to ration and radio parts in order to send communication signal with the optimism they'll get rescued during this time. This chapter should logically be the most suspenseful, given the immediate idea, the circumstance, and the fact that, by this point, we're already in the second act of the film. Sadly, little occurs here that makes for an interesting setup, and by this time, the monotony and ugliness of the hand-held-camera really begins to takes a toll, and as somebody who scarcely complains about such a thing, this is when you know things aren't going very well for this film, aesthetically speaking.

Finally, the final chapter, titled "The Survivors," details a large group of uninfected souls who have found solace on a farm. They spend much of their time strategizing their next move and checking out surrounding areas to assure their safety is long-term and not a short-term illusion. In addition, their time is spending warding off large bouts of zombies along with fighting about how to assure their own safety. Again, this is another potentially riveting portion of the film brought down by the filming techniques of Gates and Bartlett and the overall repetition of the film and the lack of character investment.

The Zombie Diaries has an intriguing structure, but little to back it up in terms of achieving any kind of narrative success. Despite having three stories, its story and story-progression isn't the least bit evident, the characters remain flat and vague, almost as if they're mannequins given the ability to talk and move, and the entire aesthetic that Gates and Bartlett hope will achieve success only results in mounting tedium for the film's already short runtime.

Starring: Russell Jones, Sophia Ellis, and James Fisher. Directed by: Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett.

I was expecting an action movie, but this is actually one of those stupid "found footage" movies, where producers pretend that there's a reason for some character to be filming every little argument that goes on between them and their friends. That just makes absolutely no sense at all to me. Why the hell would someone randomly film the countryside from a moving vehicle? Why would you choose to hold a camcorder, rather a rifle, when you're facing off against the legions of hell? I'm just completely baffled.

At one point, a character weakly explains, "I'm documenting everything, because this could be important". OK. That makes some minor amount of sense to me. First, this character is part of documentary film crew. Second, the "zombie apocalypse" or whatever has just begun, and any information could actually be somewhat useful. Third, the character seems like a lazy, whiny, useless person who wouldn't be doing anything else, anyway. However, what does he document? He documents his friends bickering. He documents the ground, as he runs. He documents everything *except* useful information.

Eventually, the movie abruptly skips ahead a month, with a different group of survivors. They, too, have a useless person who helpfully documents every argument they have. However, he doesn't have the explanation of being part of a documentary film crew. He's just some guy with a camera, who inexplicably records random crap, while not helping out in any way. At this point, I started to lose interest in the movie.

Finally, we're introduced to a third group of survivors. You're not going to believe this, but they also have a camera-obsessed member. Who are these people, and where are they coming from? Where are they finding all these cameras? Why do their friends tolerate this behavior? Why aren't they kicked out, when it's obvious that they'd rather stand around, documenting everything, rather than helping out? It's a mystery, and not one that the movie makes any attempt to explain. Anyway, the movie takes a rather strange detour in this story, switching subgenres without much warning. The zombies are nearly forgotten, though they do get a bit of lip service here and there. I won't ruin the twist for you, but it's really not much of a twist, if you're a zombie movie fan. Zombie movies have always been primarily about social dynamics (especially the original Night of the Living Dead and its remake), but the whole "zombie apocalypse" thing seems almost incidental to this movie, like some sort of background noise that could easily have been removed, without changing much of anything.

For what it's worth, the zombie effects are pretty tolerable, but almost everything else is terrible. The characters are rock stupid, the dialogue is boring, the acting is generally poor, and the writing is bland. I'm sick of low budget zombie movies where people mindlessly mimic the most basic elements of George Romero's movies, without injecting any creativity or insight of their own. I prefer slow zombies, but does every zombie movie need to have shuffling, mindless undead who chomp on the living? No! Try coming up with your own ideas for once. As much as I dislike the whole "fast zombie" movement, at least they managed to bring some original thinking to their movies. I fail to see why these very fresh zombies would be moving so slowly -- or even why they'd bite the living. It's never explained. It comes across as lazy, unoriginal fanfiction set in the Night of the Living Dead world. That might work for some people, but it doesn't work for me, especially when the rest of the movie is poorly done. I could forgive a bit of unoriginality, if the rest of the movie were worth a damn.

I'd been warned about this movie by several of my friends, but I was determined to accept it as a challenge to see if I could get through it.

Now, looking back at it, I wish I would've listened to them. I do agree with several of the reviews that the idea of the film sounded promising. Lost video diaries documenting the escalation of the zombie apocalypse sounds like something that would be a fresh change from the rest of the zombie genre.

Unfortunately, the acting and the dialogue doesn't hold up to the expectations you have for it. I'm not a big fan of the hand-held camera style. It's too jumpy and too hard to focus on any one thing. The use of night vision, while supposed to add an eerie feel to it, just makes the jumps and camera glitches all the more apparent.

The acting was mediocre at best and I didn't think that the special effects and makeup was up to snuff either. Could've been good, but unfortunately, it wasn't.