I finally watched George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead. I wish I hadn’t. Holy cow, was this movie bad. Thrilless horror, laughless black comedy, toothless satire, pointless sociopolitical ruminations, directionless plotting, unlikable characters that make the Cloverfield gang seem deep, laughable dialogue filled with puns (fucking PUNS!), special effects that make you wonder why they couldn’t just hire Tom Savini and his squibs, a documentary conceit that adds nothing but an extra level of cheesy phoniness to the already cheesy and phony script, freshman-year baloney about the media and the camera eye and blah blah blah that you’ve heard a billion times before in much better movies…I’m honestly at a loss to try to describe just how many things Romero got wrong in making this movie, from doing a mockumentary without improvised dialogue on down. And that ending! Just coming right out and saying what Night had the balls to simply imply. Awful, stupid, shockingly tedious, not scary at all. Don’t buy it, don’t rent it, don’t watch it, don’t sully your feelings about the other Dead movies with it. Just…don’t.
PS: Post-movie conversation that was a million times more entertaining than anything in this nothing-to-say movie:
THE MISSUS (arrives home): What did I miss?
SEAN: I watched a terrible, terrible movie.
THE MISSUS: Oh yeah? What?
SEAN: Diary of the Dead.
THE MISSUS: Diarrhea of the Dead? Why would you think that’d be any good?
Phew-I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’m not a ninja with the horror science like you, but I like a good zombie movie, or even a watchably-bad scary flick (disclaimer: I own and enjoy The Stuff), and I was curious to hear your take on it to see if I was just in a bad mood when I tried to give this thing a whirl.
Sigh.
Oddly enough I just finished watching it yesterday. I usually watch movies in chunks of about a half hour at a time. First half hour wasn’t so bad. Second was beginning to smell like yesterday’s fish.
That last act as it were. Just…gah.