Brace yourself... This time it's for real...

Story

The deserted streets of Britain are filled with apocalyptic chaos. Soldiers descend upon a Hertfordshire farmhouse. Scientists in contamination suits examine a festering corpse. The national news report horrific incidents around the world; rioting has been reported in all major cities. Asia has contracted an unknown disease that has just been unleashed upon England…

A group of filmmakers document the outbreak. They visit a farmhouse outside of London. All the lights are out and nobody is home. Walking through the darkened rooms they discover a reanimated corpse. They decide to hide in the woods. Scavengers hunt for supplies. A group of human survivors are unknowingly harbouring a potential psychopath who tortures zombies and kills humans for fun. Is there hope of survival as they find a naked victim in the farmhouse?

Comment

From the electrifying title, The Zombie Diaries, it sounds like we are in for a gruesome treat, the first ever talk-to-camera interview with a member of the living dead (courtesy of the YouTube and Big Brother generation). Given the influx of low-budget zombie films over the last few years it's not surprising that a few of these straight to DVD gems get hyped to high heaven. The Zombie Diaries is a prime example of this. In an apocalyptic world where the dead are returning to life and devouring the living, DV cameras will walk the earth (with the help of a tripod and a few friends). From the DVD cover and over-dramatic blurb, Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett's film looks like an entertaining Land of the Dead and 28 Days Later hybrid. (With Big Ben looming in the background as hundreds of flesh eating ghouls descend upon the streets of London).

Diaries might appear to be a slick independent zombie film that anticipates Romero's own documentary inspired Diary of the Dead (2007) but when the blood has been sucked dry its almost like Romero, the Blair Witch Project team and Quentin Tarantino were all forced to work together (zombies attack documentary filmmakers with a timeline that changes perspective). It's also fair to say that the film jumps onto the 28 Days Later and Children of Men (2006) bandwagon (replicates Children's hand-held camera approach).

On the other hand, the film does contain genuine moments of lucidity with jump-out-of-your-seat terror. As the four preliminary characters hide out in the farmhouse they explore the darkened corridors with a soft-white searchlight. The scene builds a magnificent crescendo of disjointed tension and a frantic documentary tempo that explodes when we enter the shadowy room at the top of the stairs. The deformed corpse on the floor looks at the camera and the ghastly female zombie walks towards us with heroin-dazed eyes... The audience becomes the camera/character in this horrifying and effective scene (The music also evokes the electrical and industrial hum utilised in David Lynch's 1977 masterpiece Eraserhead). The major problem is that 99% of the apocalyptic dread is described through dialogue to transcend the low-budget vibe ('the entire transport system is down and they put some kind of quarantine around three parts of the city').

The British backdrop express a downtrodden Romeroesque landscape with fluttering newspapers (similar to the start of Day of the Dead) but the personality of the film doesn't rise above its obvious Romero intoned ambience. There is a scene at the start of the film that even hijacks The Crazies. Two scientists dressed in decontamination suits with stark gasmasks examine a zombie corpse in a deserted field, it's almost like the filmmakers have pilfered through The Crazies costume department and adopted it as their own. The film hovers over the edge of ingenuity but the poor performances understate the action. It brings Diaries back to its student-like roots. The special effects help the film to attain a polished and realistic appearance but the over-abundance of unreasoned swearing compromises its professional flavour. Amazing what you can achieve with a fairly consistent script, a camera from Dixon's and a few semi-professional actors.

As the living dead descend upon the farmhouse the social impact fails to evoke substance, as the psychotic torture-porn zombie-killer is nothing more than a mindless creature that has misplaced his humanity. It says a lot for the helpless zombies that just want a little bit of human flesh, after all it's not like they can order a bucket of chicken from KFC like the rest of us.
 
Verdict

A flawed low-budget vision of Britain overrun with zombies with genuine moments of terror 2/5