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.
