I'm a fan of George A. Romero's zombie films, so I was looking forward to watching Diary of the Dead since I first heard about it.

The story is simple (maybe too simple): a group of film students and their professor are shooting a movie in the forest when one of them hears on the radio that dead people are coming to life and trying to eat the living... the same old background story from Romero's movies seen this time from another point of view, the cameras used by the students. One of the students decides they have to document the events, and the movie shows an edited version of the images taken by the cameras carried by the characters while they look for a safe place to stay and try to find if their families are ok.

The only thing that could have made this movie different, if it had been released some years ago, the hand-held camera point of view, isn't very original nowadays (Cloverfield) or in horror films (The Blair Witch Project), not even in zombie films in particular: The Zombie Diaries is a movie from 2006 with similar premise and, curiously, similar title (although Diary of the Dead is a better movie).

The plot is interesting, but not much different from any other zombie film. The movie has nothing special, the cast does a good job but the story is too thin and, this time, having Romero writing and directing hasn't been enough to make a difference. Even the ending is quite weak.

Amusing, but nothing more. Not Romero's best.

my rating: