Diary of the Dead: Steelbook Edition - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Diary of the Dead: Steelbook Edition

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
George A. Romero is a living legend in the zombie film community. He nearly single handedly pioneered some of the most influential films in the entire sub genre of horror, and even though he wasn’t 100% successful in ALL of his “Of the Dead” series of films, they are usually at least entertaining. But like all directors, there is going to be that time in their career where they put out a genuine turd, and that turd would be 2007’s Diary of the Dead. Hoping to give it at least a HINT of bright spot, Lionsgate has rescued the 16 year old Dimension Blu-ray and given it a snazzy new steelbook case and a digital copy (first time for that) in their lineup of Walmart exclusive steelbook releases this last week.

As I said above, Romero’s “Of the Dead” series have not all been 5/5 films, but at the very least they’ve all been entertaining. However, around 2007 the whole found footage thing was still going on (thank you The Blair Witch Project) and Romero decided that he’d partake in the craze by creating another zombie movie, just in the low budget “filmed with a handicam” genre. While that might have actually worked if he had written a decent script and crafted a decent film, Diary of the Dead is simply a bore fest from beginning to end.

Following a group of U of P students, the film is basically a “film within a film” as the students document the decline of the world after a massive viral outbreak that leaves its victims “zombified”. The film opens up with Jason (Josh Close) directing a monster movie as a college class project, only to get sucked into the real world where a mysterious “plague” of undead zombies seem to be cropping up. Panicking (and rightfully so) the students hop into a Winnebago and trek across country to get home. AS expected, the student’s journey is more than just a quick jaunt across the states. Instead they have to fight for their lives as they witness the zombie outbreak first hand, slowly figuring out how to kill them, and watching their numbers dwindle through attrition as the unwavering hordes of undead pick them off one by one.

Before this, Land of the Dead was probably Romero’s least liked “Of the Dead” franchise, but at least that film could tell a coherent story line. Diary of the Dead suffers from the biggest pitfalls of the found footage genre. That is it only tells a loose story in brief clips and glimpses, acting as more shock horror and “terror through confusion” than actually telling a real story arc. The film itself is much more a slice of life horror flick, with the audience viewing the “found documentary” and soaking it in as if we’re just watching a few days of these students like. As such, it sort of fizzles and dies out after the first half and hour when all of the tension is eaten up (pun intended).

The film is both enormously disappointing, and enormously sad considering the pedigree of the director at hand. Romero knows his way around a zombie film, so watching what most would consider the work of some unknown eastern Euro director on his first feature film is incredibly disheartening. I own the old Dimension Blu-ray from 2008 but never ended up watching it because I had heard how awful the film was (I’m a completionist though, so I had to own it at least), but even with low expectations in mind, left feeling cheated by Romero. It’s just a found footage movie that happens to have some zombies in it, and even by found footage metrics this is an objectively BAD film. Had someone actually told me that Romero had nothing to do with this, and this was just a cash grab sequel by the studios, I would have totally believed them.




Rating:

Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, and pervasive language




Video:

Diary of the Dead comes to Blu-ray with the same VC-1 encoded Disc that Dimension/Genius released back in 2008, so that comes with all of the baggage of an aging transfer midst a time period of mediocre “fledgling format” releases. In and of itself, the transfer isn’t that bad. The film shot using a mixture of Sony digital hand cameras as well as full on “pro” grade digital cameras for some of the panning shots. As such expect a variance on the image quality depending on which camera is used. Most of the student shot film is rather low quality with your typical “low light digital HD shots” with lot s of noise and flickering. The wide angle shots tend to look better, but there is still the distinctly heavy green and yellow filter that Romero uses. Any primary colors are dulled and muted, giving this entire film a very sickly look. There’s a few shots that stand out as being cleaner than the rest (such as when the Winnebago full of students meets up with M4 wielding survivors), but overall it’s a rather grungy, dingy looking image by design. On the flip side, most of these issues are stylistic by design, and there’s very little artifacting or negative encoding issues to speak of. The image just isn’t “pretty” if you know what I mean.









Audio:

The release also still carries over the lackluster 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track (and a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that is selected by default) over from the 2008 release as well. In the case of this film the muted and dulled audio mix sort of works because we’re under the impression that this is taken from a student edited film, shot entirely with the built in microphone, but it’s still just a bit “meh” at the end f the day. Dialog is clean for the most part (but quick angle changes with the camera will cause the vocals to get cut off or suffer a decrease in volume). LFE is pretty meager, and overall it feels like a very tight and constrained sound field over all.












Extras:

• Audio Commentary with film historian Russell Dyball
• Image Gallery
• Theatricl Trailer

Final Score:
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Diary of the Dead is what I would call an interesting idea, but one that didn’t really live up to expectations. Back in 2007 the found footage craze was still in full swing, so I fully understand why Romero decided to experiment with the filming style. Unfortunately it just did NOT play out the way he had hoped. Mostly because the script was kind of lackluster, the zombie kills never very gory or frightening, and the film became sort of his major “black spot” on the legacy of George A. Romero. Lionsgate is full bore pumping out Steelbooks to Walmart thanks to cutting the cord with Best Buy, and while I certainly love the new cover art, it’s kind of the old “can’t polish a turd” type of situations for most fans. Especially considering the technical aspects are sort of lacking on this release.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Tatiana Maslany, Shawn Roberts
Directed by: George A. Romero
Written by: George A. Romero
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, English, French DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: R
Runtime: 95 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: July 2nd, 2024

Recommendation: No, just no.