I don’t do horror films. I blame my Catholic upbringing. Why? Because when you think armaggeddon is just around the corner, that the devil is in everyone and that the dead walk among us; films which try to make these things entertaining just hit some religiously terrified spot in me and I’m a quaking, mumbling mass in the corner. And not in a fun way.

So over the years I have just avoided horrors. But I have just realised that ‘zombie films’ aren’t horrors. I know, it took me coughcough years to learn but hey at least I admit my failings. Blame the Pope.

Right so, Diary of the Dead is one of those ‘If we make this film with a hand-held camera it’ll look like totally rad and it’ll be like dead cheap’ films. Let’s call it Cloverfieldesque. It does, however, manage to avoid vomit-inducing camera wibbliness (yes it’s a word).

The story goes like this. Twentysomethings are making a horror film, they lookat the news and realise that the real horror is happening in reality. The dead live!

So what do they do? They all get in a Winnebago and head to their families one-by-one. What that their families are in I’ll leave to your imagination. And that’s kind of it really. Oh and they kill loads of zombies on the way. Actually scratch that, they kill a few zombies on the way. The makers seem to have realised that zombies aren’t all that scary what with being slow and stupid, so they’ve concentrated on the fear-for-families thing instead. 

It’s actually much better than it sounds. Whoever made it, and especially whoever edited it, has really made the most of the handheld camera. We get to know the characters in an easy, fluid way minus lots of ‘oh but don’t you remember the time we did this and that’s why we don’t get along’ exposition. They seem like a group of people who actually know eachother but don’t necessarily like eachother.

In the end, the film is a pretty run of the mill but better than your average zombie film.

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