Does that title make sense, I don't know, I don't really care. It's too easy.
I made the mistake of watching Diary of the Dead last night with my other brother, he has yet to blog. This was a mistake for two reasons. First off, as soon as it finished I had to watch the next episode of Dead Set, (which, by the way, I'm no longer ranting about, but I still think its concept is still better than the show) and second, Diary of the Dead is not good. Definitely not as good as Congo.
If you don't know, its another George Romero zombie film, this time set within a group of students making a film when the zombies attack. Cue the shaky-cam. From the start though you can tell it wouldn't be as good as Cloverfield, the most recent shaky-cam film released, especially as the guy behind the camera comes across as a bit of a dick. The problems with these films is justifying someone filming all the death as it happens, and not lifting a finger to help. But then in Diary of the Dead, you kind of don't care that he's not helping when everyone around him is quite happily shooting people. So on it goes, filming the death. It gets better when you see a reverse shot of a CCTV camera, then minutes later someone brings ins a tape saying something like, "I saw that CCTV camera and nicked the tape cause I thought it would be good for your film."
I can kind of see the point, that the nation is becoming a nation of filming people, and posting on YouTube. I know how eloquently I put it there but that's kind of the gist. We're becoming a YouTube nation I should have said. Anyway another of my favourite moments is when their professor hands the gun to another student saying the line "It's too easy.". What does this mean. A few minutes later one of the students passes her video camera to someone else, after filming another death, saying, "It's too easy. " I GET IT. Its a joke about shooting. Shooting a gun and shooting with a camera. Its easy to shoot the Zombies, and shoot them with the camera, not caring about the result. And so on...
My view of this film wasn't really helped by the fact that my brother pointed out early on how similar it was to Return To Zork. An early PC adventure which featured live-action video. After this the films couldn't really be taken seriously. But this does not mean I've missed the point. I think its the film misses the point. We're supposed to believe that we're in this "YouTube nation" but still why does no-one know what a zombie is. Even if we pretending George Romero's films don't exist in this film, what about all the early films like White Zombie, and the whole Voodoo history. This brings me back to the present. And my problem with zombies. Dead Set couldn't avoid the fact that they had to find out how to kill the zombies. OK they're like the running variety but still. If a zombie outbreak did happen I'd know you'd have to kill the brain.
Then again I'd like to think that the point of the series is that anyone who watches or takes part in Big Brother has never seen a zombie film before, or even heard the word "zombie". That's why they have to find out all this information for the first time.
It's too easy...
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