Diary Of The Dead DVD Review

By admin on May 27th, 2008

Truly and honestly this is one of the best horror films I have seen in a long while.

George A. Romero revisits the Night of The Living Dead with a very contemporary point of view. Indeed there are going to be comparisons to Coverfield and Blair Witch as this is told from the point of view of video cameras, but this point of view filming is just becoming another way of telling a story, I am sure it will spring up in other genres in the coming years.

Basically the plot is the same as the other ‘of the dead’ films, the dead have been coming back to life and there is a small group of people who are trying to figure out a) what is going on and b) how to survive.

In this case the group is comprised of some film students, the director of the low budget horror movie that they are making is (over) enthusiastic documentary maker Jason Creed - played by Joshua Close.

So the plot is not original, but the joy of this film is in the cinematography, sub texts and interplay between characters. All of which are exceptionally strong for such a movie.

The theme of freedom of information and disinformation via the internet is very apparent. Also is the reliability, spin and censorship of mass media news. Though the conclusions reached in this film are the same as the others ‘are we that much better than them’ I would love to see some progression in the mythos here, though fear by doing that some of the magic of these movies would be lost. Also it is good to see that George A Romero puts his foot down over some of the misconceptions of HIS zombies. There is a couple of nice lines about the undead not moving fast and there is NO genesis of the undead explanation (no viruses, radiation, mutations) plus it is reinforced that the zombie bite itself is not the cause of the spread of the undead, but all dead are regenerated into the undead.

Have fun trying to spot the cameos from big names in this film that otherwise really has no big name actors. Simon Pegg, Quentin Tarentino, Wes Craven, Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro and Big George himself

The DVD is available in a number of formats: (unfortunately I only had the single disc edition for review)

Diary Of The Dead - Limited Edition 2 Disc Steelbook Metal Packaging [2007]

Diary Of The Dead [Blu-ray] [2007]

Diary Of The Dead - Single Disc Edition [2007]

Diary of the Dead is due for release on 30th June 2008

I also suggest that you check out the low budget British movie The Zombie Diaries. As this covers very similar ground.