Zombies!!!! Yawwwwwwwwwn!!!!

John Romero’s Diary Of The Dead

Wow. Let me just say that I love zombie movies. In fact, you could say that the default setting on my DVD player is Zombie. I have seen a lot of them as well and even the ones that aren’t that great are still pretty good. I love slow zombies, fast zombies crawling zombies, hopping zombies, angry zombies, ancient zombies, hipster zombies and well, you get the picture. I mainly love the zombie movie because you can take zombies and cast them as symbolic of any number of social ills. In Dawn of the dead the zombies were consumers mindlessly devouring everything in their frenzy to gain access to a shopping mall. In Day of the dead the zombies were army guys and symbolic of our vast military industrial complex gone horribly wrong.

John Romero’s Diary Of The Dead continues this tradition. In Diary the zombies serve as the subject of the film’s message which is very anti-media. The main character spends the whole film filming the zombies for a documentary even at the expense of helping his friends. This is one place where the movie goes horribly wrong. In the first place the whole film within a film documenting a terrifying flight from a monster was done much better in Cloverfield. In the second place, the character’s motivations make no sense. If anyone were in the middle of a full on zombie onslaught they would either fight or run, not keep filming. The main character literally lets his friends get chased around by zombies while he films them. What a dick.

In addition to a lack of proper character motivation the film has really crappy dialogue. I can’t tell you how many times actors stared at one another and said things that no one would ever say, ever. Ever. The whole thing was pretty low budget, but even still it looked like they kind of skimped on the zombie attacks.

What else? Oh yeah, no shotguns. Can you believe that crap? Not one scene where a big dude with a pump shotgun blows a zombie head clean of its body. There were also no shots of hordes of zombies coming in waves after the main characters. Not a good movie. I almost stopped watching after thirty minutes. I would avoid this film.

You should rent this movie if

1. You don’t like yourself very much
2. You enjoy melodramatic, overwrought dialogue.
3. You don’t believe me.

You should buy this movie if

1. You have a collection of crappy movies.
2. You are a John Romero completist.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price: