Diary of the Dead
Third Rail Releasing | Release Date: February 15, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
A giddy kick-out-the-jams entertainment. Diary takes a tack that's not exactly new, but is new to Romero, and as one might expect, the director brings a sharp and uncompromising new perspective to it. Read full review
90
VarietyEddie Cockrell
Gripping, intimate genre triumph. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
In most horror movies, it's a given that we should root for the heroes to make it out alive, but Diary of the Dead isn't nearly so certain, and so it terrifies us all the more. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
This one belongs with the leaders of the scare pack. Isn't it time that we give Romero his due? It's hardly an accident that Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg and Wes Craven recognize Romero as a master. He is. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Horror movie Rule #1: The only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the brain. George Romero himself laid this maxim down with his first film, the endlessly influential 1968 gutter classic "Night of the Living Dead." Forty years later, with George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the venerable filmmaker has done something almost as startling: He has put brains back into the zombie genre. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
A raw, vivid despatch from the frontline, this melds content with frights in classic Romero style. An outstanding exercise in showing the kids how to do it. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Diary of the Dead is meant to scare your pants off, blow your mind out the back of your skull, and then deposit you ungently back into reality, quaking a little, maybe, but still alive and, unlike the undead, thinking. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
There are zombie movies and then there are George Romero films. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
All-in-all, the intelligence of the approach combined with good old-fashioned zombie blood-and-gore (as opposed to the slicker, sicker torture porn variety) makes this not only the most satisfying motion picture Romero has made in a long while, but one of the best of his career. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The way Diary of the Dead chooses to deliver its gore, you know you’re in the hands of a grown-up uninterested in the excesses of the “Saw” or “Hostel” pictures. I mean, there’s gore, sure, and flesh gets eaten. But the way Romero shoots and cuts the shot of a girl’s reunion with her parents, one dead, one undead, it’s played for keeps--the right kind of gross, with a touch of mournful gravity. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
The film's take on media and personal responsibility recalls Brian De Palma's faux Iraq documentary, "Redacted," here dropped into a homefront turned guerrilla war zone. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
What divides opinion is the film's tone: Are those naive, portentous pronouncements about media, voyeurism and the numbing, pornographic allure of atrocity footage a sly reflection of the YouTube generation's boundary-free narcissism and callow youth, or evidence that Romero – never one to underplay a metaphor – has become a hectoring, tin-eared fogey? Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Hartlaub
It's one of the least scary films that he's made - but still entertaining, and very, very gory. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Compared with other first-person motion-sickness horror pictures like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield," George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead is weak tea, yet there’s enough social commentary (and innovative splatter) to acidulate the brew--to remind you that Romero, even behind the curve, makes other genre filmmakers look like fraidy-cats. Read full review
70
Village VoiceNathan Lee
Visually, Romero's ersatz-DIY experiment isn't as suave as Brian De Palma's similar effort in the recent and risible "Redacted," nor as exactingly engineered as the video convulsions of "Cloverfield," but its scrappy, ultra-low-budget edges are part of its charm. Read full review
70
Film ThreatZack Haddad
I love zombie movies. I love George Romero even more. It is easy to say that every movie he comes out with is an event for me, so it brings me great sadness to say that I felt let down by his latest effort, Diary of the Dead. Read full review
70
SlateDana Stevens
Hardly top-drawer Romero. In fact, it may be his worst zombie film yet. But even bad Romero is a far sight more interesting than the coolly sadistic guts-porn that currently passes for mainstream horror. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Diary of the Dead isn't bad; it's a kicky B movie hiding inside a draggy, self-conscious-work-of-auteurist-horror one. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The body has its needs, and one of the problems with Diary of the Dead is that it doesn’t get into your body; it doesn’t shake you up, jolt you, make you shiver and squeak. It’s clever, or at least clever enough to keep you going and interested from start to finish. It just isn’t scary. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
As in the more successful "Land Of The Dead," Romero makes an admirable attempt to update his beloved franchise for contemporary audiences. But this time out, his heavy-handed intellectual concerns get in the way of a perfectly good fright flick. Read full review
58
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
With Diary of the Dead, Romero goes back to the beginning, only this time the amateurish look is calculated and the resulting film far less effective - if only because a handful of filmmakers have beaten him to the punch. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
This "Living Dead" exercise delivers far less monstrosity and a great deal of pomposity, not to mention dull characters who aren't nearly as lively as those dead guys. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Diary of the Dead features some of the most hilariously gross images since "Dawn of the Dead." In one online video the filmmakers find, a father playfully pulls off a birthday clown’s red rubber nose and the guy’s real nose comes off with it. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
Romero's we're-all-doomed-and-maybe-we-deserve-it pessimism is so extreme he would fit right in with a real group of brain-eaters: the French. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
There are a few clever moments, as when an Amish farmer saves the tech-savvy students. But mostly, we're in it for the gore. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Moderately scary, moderately amusing, intermittently dull and obvious, Diary of the Dead is not groundbreaking, nor even ground-quaking. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Diary of the Dead is at its best when Romero is just goofing off, like when he shows us home video footage of a children's birthday party. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
The movie suffers from the same malaise Romero diagnoses in society. It's just too mediated to be scary, despite its zeal for gore. You can't feel the characters' fear, and they don't seem to feel it either. Read full review
40
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
A limp and dreary experience, at least after you get past its intriguing premise. It's poorly written and woodenly acted, completely formulaic and hopelessly imprisoned by both its genre and finally its form. Read full review
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