Danny
25-Jul-2009, 03:49 AM
let me explain. I've tried multiple times since ive purchased this to watch it. However every time ive found myself unable to sit through it for the duration. For me thats a rarity, i will sit through any old piece of crap. Yet i gave it another chance and sat through it to its ending and im not impressed. In fact i tried to write a review for this and i sat in front of my mac and had nothing. I've seen worse movies. I have seen pieces of shit that you know were made JUST to generate some money. To there credit this is not one of those movies. Its just something i did not enjoy at all form start to finish. I think there is going to be some bias towards this purely because there is a subsection of this forum dedicated to it, and thats probably why i gave it a fair chance myself when normally i might not have but this is just impossible to review so all i can come up with is a list of pro's and con's to get across what i mean.
PRO'S
-Fx there are plenty of impressive effects, and not cgi but real gory old school effects and it was very nice to see something that impressive in a small feature when they could have gone an easier route.
-human antagonists were unique to the genre and shocking enough to stand out from an ever increasingly stale cliche of post apocalyptic works of fiction.
CON'S
-acting - the characters were completely unrelatable and at times it was hard to keep track of which actor played which role. at the end of the movie i can remember not one of the characters names and not one of the deaths had any weight or impact to them.
-sound - almost consistently this film used a small sample range that repeated throughout, from a dramatic SLAM on a keyboard to a half life 2 pistol effect it grates against any attempts at dramatic buildup.
-guy gets "bitten" and goes through the 'dramatic death' ive seen far too many times before.
-narrative - the story doesn't make that much sense coherently speaking. The film breaks the illusion every so often by making the audience question sequences of events as though the writer had a full narrative in his head, but failed to commit it in its entirety to paper and we, as the viewer, only get a partial version of the scene.
-is it a documentary?, in diary of the dead we know the protagonist's have been editing on the move and at the start are told why there are sound effects. In this movie we are never quite sure if the film is meant to be "found footage", a home movie play by play?, or perhaps a constraint on budget meant this was a workaround cop out over a lack of cameras for multiple shots?. Honestly i cant tell, and therein lies the problem.
unusual reactions - from the get go these characters seem to have instinctual knowledge of whats going on. they see there first dead body and zombie and act like they know exactly what it is. This is expressed without words but this is a fatal flaw in writing, the writer becomes too associated with there work and gives the characters a leg up without realizing the hows and whys dont add up with the speed of the plot reveals.
i could go on for quite a while reasoning the con's but honestly i feel bad doing so, because i can tell they really tried with this movie. the trouble is its not sure what kind of movie it wants to be, and at different points in the movie, whichever film it is trying to be is one i have seen before.
The plot holes and inconsistencies are completely forgettable and dont detract from the viewing experience. What does is due to the fact that the creators have not tried to tell a story. They have tried to string set pieces together without securing the shots to do so. I can understand the tension builder of a crowd shambling towards the survivors, But why is the street empty bar that group of 6 at the camera and the obligatory one behind them they spin around to jump away from just in time?. Why not one or two slumped against a wall or sitting down till they notice the survivors? there was room for so much more creativity, instead they went for something safe that has worked before and in doing so created scenes that feel like an attempt to imitate great screen horror movie "crescendo events" that end up feeling more like a staged production than unfortunate happenstance that the genre dictates.
I'm not nitpicking at all here, thats why i feel i cant give this a review in the traditional terms, i did not go in looking for bad things to point out. These were glaring problems that put me off the film from the get go. The film is frenetic and confusing. The dialogue, forced and uninspired. The story is ambitious but bogged down by rules of a genre enforced by no one but the fanbase.
Theres a good film in here, however its constricted from the start because the filmmakers seem to have restricted there creative freedom with self enforced rules from various other movies, obviously including romeros, and they seemed to deny themselves the chance to experiment and tell a unique story.
I could ramble on but i'll cut it short. Is this film worth seeing? yes. Not, however as entertainment, but for filmmakers to view what can happen when people are so pressured by the homage that they are bound to a story they dont seem enthused enough to tell as a lesson. The biggest problem from this is every other shot is something i can name from another zombie movie thats well known and its so focussed on doing this that the mise-en-scene is not build around it to secure the reality of the scene as something believable. This came off as unoriginal and disappointing.
If i could say something to the filmmakers it would not be some imdb trolling like "never make another piece of crap like this again LOL", instead i would say this-
You could have told your own story, instead you told another story anchored by someone else's. The talent is there, but you need to allow yourself creative freedom. My honest advice would be to start again, write another zombie movie, but make it your own. It's your story to tell, you dont have to die if your bitten the choice is up to you. I think you can honestly do much better if only you tell yourself that its not about the set pieces or that one line you think will leave the audience in awe of its subtextual impact. Its about telling a story, something people remember. Something thats your very own.
Make a movie thats a story, not a movie thats a checklist.
PRO'S
-Fx there are plenty of impressive effects, and not cgi but real gory old school effects and it was very nice to see something that impressive in a small feature when they could have gone an easier route.
-human antagonists were unique to the genre and shocking enough to stand out from an ever increasingly stale cliche of post apocalyptic works of fiction.
CON'S
-acting - the characters were completely unrelatable and at times it was hard to keep track of which actor played which role. at the end of the movie i can remember not one of the characters names and not one of the deaths had any weight or impact to them.
-sound - almost consistently this film used a small sample range that repeated throughout, from a dramatic SLAM on a keyboard to a half life 2 pistol effect it grates against any attempts at dramatic buildup.
-guy gets "bitten" and goes through the 'dramatic death' ive seen far too many times before.
-narrative - the story doesn't make that much sense coherently speaking. The film breaks the illusion every so often by making the audience question sequences of events as though the writer had a full narrative in his head, but failed to commit it in its entirety to paper and we, as the viewer, only get a partial version of the scene.
-is it a documentary?, in diary of the dead we know the protagonist's have been editing on the move and at the start are told why there are sound effects. In this movie we are never quite sure if the film is meant to be "found footage", a home movie play by play?, or perhaps a constraint on budget meant this was a workaround cop out over a lack of cameras for multiple shots?. Honestly i cant tell, and therein lies the problem.
unusual reactions - from the get go these characters seem to have instinctual knowledge of whats going on. they see there first dead body and zombie and act like they know exactly what it is. This is expressed without words but this is a fatal flaw in writing, the writer becomes too associated with there work and gives the characters a leg up without realizing the hows and whys dont add up with the speed of the plot reveals.
i could go on for quite a while reasoning the con's but honestly i feel bad doing so, because i can tell they really tried with this movie. the trouble is its not sure what kind of movie it wants to be, and at different points in the movie, whichever film it is trying to be is one i have seen before.
The plot holes and inconsistencies are completely forgettable and dont detract from the viewing experience. What does is due to the fact that the creators have not tried to tell a story. They have tried to string set pieces together without securing the shots to do so. I can understand the tension builder of a crowd shambling towards the survivors, But why is the street empty bar that group of 6 at the camera and the obligatory one behind them they spin around to jump away from just in time?. Why not one or two slumped against a wall or sitting down till they notice the survivors? there was room for so much more creativity, instead they went for something safe that has worked before and in doing so created scenes that feel like an attempt to imitate great screen horror movie "crescendo events" that end up feeling more like a staged production than unfortunate happenstance that the genre dictates.
I'm not nitpicking at all here, thats why i feel i cant give this a review in the traditional terms, i did not go in looking for bad things to point out. These were glaring problems that put me off the film from the get go. The film is frenetic and confusing. The dialogue, forced and uninspired. The story is ambitious but bogged down by rules of a genre enforced by no one but the fanbase.
Theres a good film in here, however its constricted from the start because the filmmakers seem to have restricted there creative freedom with self enforced rules from various other movies, obviously including romeros, and they seemed to deny themselves the chance to experiment and tell a unique story.
I could ramble on but i'll cut it short. Is this film worth seeing? yes. Not, however as entertainment, but for filmmakers to view what can happen when people are so pressured by the homage that they are bound to a story they dont seem enthused enough to tell as a lesson. The biggest problem from this is every other shot is something i can name from another zombie movie thats well known and its so focussed on doing this that the mise-en-scene is not build around it to secure the reality of the scene as something believable. This came off as unoriginal and disappointing.
If i could say something to the filmmakers it would not be some imdb trolling like "never make another piece of crap like this again LOL", instead i would say this-
You could have told your own story, instead you told another story anchored by someone else's. The talent is there, but you need to allow yourself creative freedom. My honest advice would be to start again, write another zombie movie, but make it your own. It's your story to tell, you dont have to die if your bitten the choice is up to you. I think you can honestly do much better if only you tell yourself that its not about the set pieces or that one line you think will leave the audience in awe of its subtextual impact. Its about telling a story, something people remember. Something thats your very own.
Make a movie thats a story, not a movie thats a checklist.