I never thought I'd see the day when I wrote a negative review of a George Romero zombie movie, but that day I never thought I'd see has come. Diary of the Dead easily rates as the biggest cinematic letdown for me. Upon hearing Romero was doing another Dead flick I was quite excited. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I was expecting an enjoyable movie, but what I got was mostly poor with some good moments.



George Romero made his feature debut in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead and when Diary of the Dead got it's theatrical release it's almost 40-years since his debut; so right there you can't expect Romero to be the filmmaker he was in his prime, but the problem is with Diary of the Dead he's not even half the filmmaker he once was. A lot of people felt Land of the Dead was a letdown and while I can't say I disagree at the end of the day Land of the Dead was alright and I suppose that was the problem. Romero was a filmmaker who reached a level of greatness most filmmakers can only dream of having and with Land of the Dead he was just hanging onto that; Diary of the Dead is by a filmmaker far past his prime.



The one thing I always loved about Romero's movies was his characters; he's an excellent writer who created such great characters with so much depth. The screenplay for Diary of the Dead was simply poor. The characters were terrible! They were rather annoying with no depth at all. Diary of the Dead is one the type of movie that you'll be hard pressed to remember the names of any of the characters and that's never a good thing.



Debra played by Michelle Morgan was the only character that was fairly decent, but she's mostly just poorly written for and lacks any depth that it's hard to feel anything for her.



The concept for Diary of the Dead is nothing short of brilliant, but the execution was way off. The comedic elements don't work at all there's nothing really funny about them. The only part I found funny is when one character is explaining why the dead don't run. Besides that the comedy was very weak. George Romero is one of my favorite writers, but Diary of the Dead was just lacking I felt the screenplay was poor with very little good about it.



As director George Romero doesn't fair any better; The first 3 Dead movies has such amazing suspense and tension and always had this feel of dread and even despite the flaws Land of the Dead also featured some of that even if not as solid. But here there was no suspense or tension and the feel of dread was never around. Diary of the Dead really could have been made by any DTV filmmaker. Besides the social commentary there really isn't anything Romero about this movie; I don't know maybe it's me, but Diary of the Dead feels like a movie by a guy who's seen Night of the Living Dead one too many times.



Quite honestly there were a lot of moments that borderline on poor filmmaking. Several scenes are meant to be a little campy, but there's almost this feel of unintentional comedy at times. And even if some of these moments were meant to be light it doesn't work and comes out rather poor.



The acting takes a lot of heat, but while the acting was weak it's not as bad as it's made out to be. But it does hurt the film in some spots. At times it's a bit hard too take anything too serious since the actors while not terrible, but just aren't strong enough to pull off the more dramatic moments.



What I did however like about Diary of the Dead is the documentary like feel it has going for it. That's why I said earlier the concept was nothing short of brilliant, but the execution was just way off. I might be a little too harsh on Diary of the Dead, but I expected a lot more from George Romero. Maybe in time I'll grow to like this movie, but as of now I can easily say this is my least favorite of all of Romero's Dead movies.



In closing, Diary of the Dead isn't terrible despite my review, but it's really not very good at all. Again maybe in time I'll grow to like it, but upon my first viewing while there were some good moments they are few and far between.