Saturday, April 18, 2009

Update/Zombie Diaries Review

We haven't had a meeting for quite some time. As was stated in the first post, we started Zombie Club because every female we knew was involved in a book club. Well, apparently the book club isn't meeting too often these days, so we haven't met for Zombie Club, either. We really need to just watch a zombie movie anyway, regardless if there is a book club that night or not.

In related news, I watched Zombie Diaries by myself the other night. Here is what the cover looks like.

Now I want you to picture in your head what kind of movie this will be.
Your response is probably, "An awesome movie!"
Your response would be wrong.
Nothing on that cover even comes close to happening. Never is there a scene even remotely that cool.
Now, I knew this going into the movie. Scotty had already seen and had warned me that it wasn't very good. So I went into it knowing full well that the cover is completely misleading...and that is how everyone should go into watching this movie.

It actually was not a terrible movie. The concept was that there were three different groups filming their experiences with a hand-held video camera. The footage was shaky, but that was to make it more real. Not a terrible concept. However, there were large portions of the movie that involved lots of running and shooting at night. The camera was showing the ground as they ran...and you really couldn't see any zombies at all. I suppose that's realistic; if you're the guy filming all this stuff, chances are you're not great with guns, so you'd be turning and running. The problem is that you didn't really see too many zombies at all.

A couple of the scenes were pretty unrealistic. One group that we followed consisted of two men (one with a gun, the other with the camera) and a woman. They were heading into town to get food, but they were being cautious, as there figured to be zombies there. The man with the gun mentioned how they didn't have too much ammo, so they had to conserve the bullets that they had. That's cool. I get that. But, when a single zombie comes stumbling towards them, he waits until it's within smashing distance, then shoots it in the head. If there's only one zombie and you're running out of bullets, you don't shoot that thing; you bash its head with whatever is close to you (say, the butt of the rifle that you have in your hand).

The end was pretty bad, too. I can see the message they were trying to convey, but they did it in such a terrible way that it had absolutely no impact. Also, it was a really stupid message.

There was a moment that made me jump. I don't want to ruin it for you, but the first zombie sighting was a bit startling. That was really the high point of the movie.

It's not a terrible movie, just don't go into it thinking that there are going to be massive explosions and an awesome guy walking into zombie town with a shotgun and a 9mm. If you're wanting to watch a movie like this that is actually a good movie, watch Diary of the Dead. It's a much better movie in so many ways.