User reviews

The Zombie Diaries was intriguing in the very early going. It had a low budget realism that actually worked for a little bit. I remember one scene early on where a character had trouble lining up a single close range rifle shot against a lone zombie. There's more realism in that than most movies that feature over-the-shoulder head shots on moving targets from 50 yards away. Unfortunately, that's about the best thing I have to say about this movie.

The Zombie Diaries consists of three separate stories that occur during a zombie epidemic in England. The stories intersect later on in the movie, and that's really about all you can say about it in a review. There are numerous characters in the various stories- so many in fact, that it's hard to identify one from the other after awhile. The virtually non-stop cinema verite shaky camera will drive you mad and makes it impossible to follow the storyline they're trying to set up. This is especially true during the nighttime scenes, and there are several of those. With all apologies to my British friends- the actors in this movie are so British that they're nearly incomprehensible.

So, if you've seen Zombie Diaries, you can scratch it off your list and move on. If you haven't, you're not missing much. With all that being said, I will say that there's a basis here for a much better movie. I would be interested if someone gave it another go with a script rewrite and some improvements in the basic cinematography.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From the very first frame you will be amazed at how completely bad this movie is.

It starts with a ridiculous scene of a family celebrating the birthday of their kid. The dad mentions that they've been told not to venture out. There is no lighting. They hear a noise. Why they would go out in the middle of the night to see what the noise is is beyond credibility.

Then there is a scream in the house. The wife runs back. Well, this is the start. It's ridiculous.

Then it cuts to the military and it gets a wee bit better, except everybody is using a video camera to record all this stuff. Dumb. Why is everyone camera crazy? And when bad things happen, why are the crazy camera guys still filming instead of running?

Makes no sense.

The military scene degrades and the whole film becomes a big mess.

Is it really so hard to write a script that is even marginally believable? Or at least one that makes some logical sense once you suspend belief?

And I love how in these handy cam films no one ever runs out of batteries, despite using flood lights on their cameras throughout!

The entire movie goes like this -- zombie engagement. Lull for discussion about avoiding zombies. Zombie engagement. Lull for talking about zombie engagement.

There is no real plot. And considering the zombies barely move and the military has a seemingly endless supply of ammo, why any one is worries is up for question.

These zombies are like wooden display statues!

The film allegedly cost a million to make. Where did the money go? It looks like a 70K movie.

Stay away at all costs.

The premise of the movie is great. After a zombie epidemic, various video diaries are recovered. These video diaries tell the tales of survival of 3 groups of people whose stories eventually interweave.

Sadly, the acting is terrible. The best acting is done by the zombies. The special effects and makeup appear to have been done by students venturing into their first foray into gore. The best makeup/special effect is the clouded contacts and anybody with 20 dollars and Wal-Mart nearby can pull that off. Some zombies look downright comical, almost as if they are wearing cheap Halloween costumes.

This movie has some of the comedy that has come to be expected in the genre, but it's not intentional. In one scene, a shot from about 20 yards away with a rifle takes about two seconds before the zombies head is (poorly) blown apart.

The camera work is terrible. There is no sense of a "diary" in any of the 3 scenarios. Just groups filming their goings on and there's too much of a random feeling to it. And not random in the good way. More like "Why in the world would they be filming THIS?" There should have been more asides and narrating from the cameramen. Instead of having a sense of "this is a diary that recorded their struggles for whoever may find it", you had more of a sense of "this is a bad class project done by middle school children". The dialogue is forced. Whether it was written or improvised, it smacked of trying too hard to "act", and this totally destroyed the feel of "this is real people reacting to real events".

There are about 3 scenes that could have been very powerful. One of them has been done in almost every zombie movie before and the main difference this time around was the age of the "victim". The other two scenes were more confusing than anything. There's a difference between leaving things opened for interpretation and just totally dropping the ball.

All in all, I was very disappointed. A great concept was ruined.

This did the one thing I never forgive a movie for doing: it bored me. Slow, bad acting and a complete waste of time. I don't know why this was even released and what the writer, director and producers were thinking. Did they watch it before they released it? And if they did, what about this crap-fest made them think it was ready to be released? Heck, I love bad movies but not this one. I can't even say it's so bad it's good - it's just bad.

The only good reviews on here must be cast and crew members and perhaps their friends and family. Oh... And I see they made a sequel. Well, cased on this crappy movie, I know I won't watch it.

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.

Yes this film has problems, but I did enjoy it and thought it showed promise from the film-makers. At times it gets a little confusing with the shaky cam style, but it is interesting.

I thought it would have been better to see more of the zombie action, rather than the build up. The acting isn't great, but all in all I did find the film enjoyable and interesting. Would be interested to see what the film-makers could do with a bit of a budget.

Not an amazing zombie film, but better than some of the reviews on here in my opinion...

Worth a watch

Totally amateurish movie, and it shows in every aspect. I won't give spoilers but simply discuss the cinematic merit.

1. Soundtrack - no such thing. Most often people are just talking without any soundtrack. Soundtracks are important in horror films. Sometimes there are sounds but they don't qualify as music.

2. Acting - weak.

3. Lighting - Terrible. Sometimes the face of the actor looks totally white and shiny due to lighting being aimed right into their faces.

4. Makeup effects - weak, low budget.

5. Camera work - unskilled, probably hand held.

6. Extras - no use of extras. Just a few actors (budget again).

7. Zombies - again to the low budget effects couldn't be done so when zombies attack you will see almost only darkness.

8. Plot - another zombie movie...

Its not even "cult bad", its just bad due to poor execution and a waste of time.

In this age of the zombie renaissance (which seems to be giving way to a revitalized interest in vampires, thanks to TWILIGHT...yawn), we seem to be surrounded by all things undead. No mystery there: thanks to the spread of information on the internet in the late 90s and, soon after, the film 28 DAYS LATER, common moviegoers finally caught on that there was more to horror than lame slasher flicks featuring an endless succession of bemasked murderers.

They rediscovered the works of Romero and others, and found that there was something about the zombie sub-genre that spoke to our deepest nightmares: a fear of society, its inhabitants, and its collapse. This seemed especially relevant in the post-9/11 era. Watch news coverage of the zombie crisis in George Romero's NIGHT and DAWN and try not to think about that terrifying, fateful day in September, 2001.

What remains a mystery, however, is that almost no one --during the Romero heyday of zombies or their 21st Century 'renaissance'-- got it right. In this reviewer's opinion, there are about seven, yes, SEVEN films that have truly realized the full potential and promise of the undead theme, and sadly, two of them are remakes and two are semi-satirical send-ups of the genre.

So I shouldn't be too surprised in the disappointing and wasted effort that is THE ZOMBIE DIARIES. I'd heard a lot of good internet buzz about it, so I decided it was worth the three dollar rental. I knew there was a problem when I had to turn it off about halfway into the film. Was it too gory, too intense, too scary? Not in the slightest. Though I returned a day later to finish DIARIES, my opinion of the film on my first attempt hadn't changed.

What could have been an interesting premise --a zombie outbreak documented by several camera-toting groups in the English countryside--falls flat on its face before the opening credits have even finished. We're treated to an anti-climactic interview about a nasty plague sweeping Asia at the beginning of the film, which marks the only occasion I can recall that a movie loses its momentum within a few minutes of the opening titles. Even worse is the stiff, pompous cast we're forced to contend with. Not one of the cast members convincingly sells any urgency, not to mention the fact that the dead are returning to life and the country has been plunged into total chaos.

The narrative and script are seemingly aimless; we're bored quickly by the pretty scenery of the countryside, where (occasionally) non-threatening zombies show up and stumble about. DIARIES loses itself in an insular and uninteresting world -- what's going on in the cities? What about TV and Radio news reports, which in the other films (like NIGHT, DAWN) proved the most stirring and memorable moments? I understand small productions like this have budgetary constraints to consider, but the filmmakers missed an all-too important cue in not giving their boring little universe some scope. What should conjure feelings of isolation in the audience only makes us lose interest before the second act has even arrived.

The zombies themselves are shambling Romero knock-offs, and not well-done, either. The special effects used to create the monsters are professional enough, but rubber stamped with all the "ooh" and "aah" trademarks any college film student hopes to afford. "Look, the zombies have white contact lenses! How creepy!" Aside from the fact that these ghouls are among the least scary I have seen in a long while, the reactions the characters have to them are even less convincing. A group of survivors seem to have no fear confronting a cadre of marauding flesh eaters in one shot, but are ostensibly paralyzed at the appearance of a single ghoul the next. Also, though agonizingly slow, these zombies seem to have no problem sneaking up on adrenaline-pumped humans in wide open grazing fields. Go figure.

The ending of THE ZOMBIE DIARIES is a feeble attempt at throwing the audience a curve ball, and while I won't give anything away, the film's conclusion is completely tacked on, and frankly, a cheap shot that seems at once out of place and mundane.

DIARIES is just one example (in a LONG list of books, graphic novels, films, video games and other media) of why the zombie resurgence failed. Few of these works seems to have had the guts to break away from the "rules" laid out by the "...of the Dead" films, ultimately to the artistic detriment of each.

Due in part to these reasons, THE ZOMBIE DIARIES fails in originality, and succeeds in not much else. One wonders how good a zombie film this MIGHT have been.

As I've said before I'm a cheapskate and I'll pretty much watch anything I rent but even I couldn't endure this piece of junk.I've seen some terrible zombie films in my years of watching horror films and this was one of the worst of the bunch.

The film is supposedly camera footage shot by different groups that chronicle their tribulations after London is overrun by walking dead.It mostly ended up being a film that featured a lot of bad actors standing or sitting around trying to emote the horror of fighting off zombies while talking into a shaky camera,ala "Blair Witch",while not being even close to as good as "Blair Witch".

After one moist eyed snotty nosed young man likened his situation to the people in the World Trade Towers on September 11,2001 I'd had quite enough and ejected the DVD from my player as quickly as I could.

Nothing really good to say about this crap-fest....the acting as horrible,the script was lame,even if it was ad-libbed it was still bad stuff.Special effects non-existent,they mainly consisted of newspapers blowing around in the streets.The zombies were those half-ass done kind with just some pale makeup smeared and there and some blood dashed on here and there.Long camera shots of a dead spider on a counter and rain splashing in a puddle were also counted as special effects I assume.Apparently the special effects budget was shot in the opening scenes where a handful of soldiers wearing gear that looked like it was from WWII ran around for a few minutes taking cover behind objects as they moved toward some buildings as though they expected the zombies to shoot at them! Right then I knew this was gonna be a puke of a movie.

No hordes of zombies here,just a few here and there milling around,usually standing in a group waiting for their cue to fall when someone shoots a gun their way.Then the camera holder walks up and shows us the zombie laying there with a splatter pattern of brains and blood fanned out from the head all over the ground looking as though the zombie was shot up through the head from under the chin while laying there.Bleeck!At least get the basic physics right! Don't waste a second on this mess.It's unwatchable.I gave it a 1 and I really wish this website would add some negative numbers to the ratings scale.

What happened to the good old days when people shot homemade porno when they got some camera equipment instead of their own horror movie?

I actually couldn't stand to watch the whole movie. The quality is nonexistent. I couldn't understand hardly anything anyone was saying.The whole movie is filmed with a shaky camcorder .The cover is a complete lie.Definitely one of the worst movies ever made.It's the sort of movie that makes you think almost anyone with a camcorder could have done better.

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.

The Zombie Diaries is a mix between the realism of 28 Days Later, and the suspense and terror of the George A. Romero's 'of the Dead' series. The storyline of Zombie Diaries follows the experience of three different parties. A group of four people filming a documentary, only to find themselves trapped in a forest filled with the living dead. The second is a group of 3 people who have survived the outbreak for a month, scavenging for supplies and travelling throughout the country for some unknown reason. The third group is an unknown amount of people, surviving, living in an old barn.

There are some flaws with this film, the acting for instance is dreadful. The first group are friends that work together, however they don't talk like they know each other, they talk like teenagers in a school play forced to talk in a friendly way with a person they have only just met. They make unnecessary moves that just wouldn't happen in a real life situation like that, such as running in the opposite direction of a car that could bring you to safety. The second party make an even more stupid mistake, like parking their car for absolutely no apparent reason.

The good parts of the film is the zombies are scary, there are some genuinely intense moments where you never know what will come around the corner, you are genuinely scared. Another good point is the realism of the film, besides the shabby acting and the unnecessary things they do, the film focuses on how the people survive, the needs they have, the dangers they face and how zombies aren't the only thing they need to worry about.

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.