I get that; just think it was a bad choice. The girl who ostensibly survives to put the documentary together seems like such a nitwit film student – thinking it’s a good idea to add music and other gimmicks in order to “scare” the viewer. Given that the viewer would of necessity have to be another survivor in the same zombie-infested world, I’m pretty sure they’d already be scared.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, and I hope it’s not considered a zombie thread (no pun intended).
I hated this movie passionately, and I am one of the biggest Romero/horror fans you will ever find. I even enjoyed Land of the Dead. I like the shaky-cam storytelling that Blair Witch and Cloverfield did and I think it’s a great way to tell a story, but honestly, Romero blew it.
The cheesy voiceover saying the narrator was going to add sound effects was one of the worst decisions Georgy could have made. That alone defeats the purpose of the shaky-cam style of directing.
And no one else has mentioned what a huge cop-out the 2nd camera was. It’s difficult to shoot a movie as a shaky-cam flick, but that’s part of what makes it interesting to watch. The 2nd camera ruined it. Then he also cut in cell-phone camera footage and surveillance video. Terrible. If you’re going to cut to whatever camera view is convenient at the time, let’s drop the whole “shaky cam” deal and just shoot the movie normally. There was no reason to do this in the style of Blair Witch and Cloverfield. It was just distracting and it added nothing.
I hated that the timeline was completely different from Night, Dawn, Day, and Land, which managed to keep a consistent timeline throughout all 4 movies.
I hated that they detoured to Scranton. I kept waiting for them to hide out in Dunder-Mifflin… couldn’t have found another small town in Pennsylvania that isn’t so closely associated with a major sitcom at the moment, George?
The social commentary was too much, even for a George Romero movie.
Terrible. I can’t remember the last time I was so disappointed in a movie.
Technically, Diary was a “reboot” and took place in the same timeframe as Night.
Didn’t stop it from blowing undead goat testicles though.
I’m not sure why, but I think I’m even more annoyed by the movie now that I know that.
I completely agree on all counts, Romero just seems to have missed the point of that shaky-cam style; plus, that panic room just happened to have editing equipment, a sound effects library and everything you need to compose a score? Why? So you can amuse yourself with adding funny jingles to the security cam footage while presumably locking yourself off from some outside thread?
But what really made me hate that movie with a passion that burns hotter than a thousand… well, a thousand rather small candles probably, I’m not really one for hate, but still, for me, that’s a lot, was that overblown clichéd world-weary pretentious f*ckwad of a professor. “Ooh no, I can’t take a GUN, because I am EXHIBITING SIGNS of a DARK PAST, which is also why I DRINK, and why I get to act SMUGLY SUPERIOR to everybody else and feel completely SELF-RIGHTEOUS in my CYNICAL DISMISSAL of the world!” (Yes, the caps are essential.)
Damn. I almost want to watch it again just to shout obscenities every time that cock appeared on screen.
See, I felt like the movie was doing all that on purpose–the world weary professor, the cheesy lines (“Us versus them”)…that’s what made it so awesome for me.
If Diary really was mean to be happening the same time as Night then Romero made a big error. Diary takes place in October, net Night took place in spring (Johnny & Barbara were talking about the clocks going forward).
It’s a possibility, true, I’d thought about something like that in terms of a sort of film-in-a-film being put together by a film student with a somewhat limited experience and understanding of what might constitute ‘deep’ and ‘meaningful’, what with the slow-mos and whatnot, but unfortunately, at least for me, at the heart of a bad movie with meta-appeal is still a bad movie. Just doing something intentionally and self-consciously doesn’t automatically make it good, and personally, I think this sort of approach works particularly bad in this kind of film, that on the one hand tries to go for total immersion with the POV-style shaky-cam, and on the other hand necessitates detachment to appreciate the meta elements.
For me, the Prof was about the only redeeming feature in the movie, and the only character I didn’t want to see die. Some cliches aren’t so bad.
The idea of a ground-level you-are-there depiction of the beginning of the living dead problem is fine; and the underlying theme of how we’ve become electronic voyeurs (and our communications technology keeps us at a distance instead of making us closer) is okay; just stop hitting me over the head with it. I’d like to have seen the movie done as a compilation of amateur footage, security cams, police, news footage and the like, put together without the stupid pretentious narration and pointless artsy touches that the nitwit film student chick comes up with.