The Zombie Diaries

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The posters always lie!

Three separate but interlocking stories of survival by unlikely people from London in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse happening around the world.

The Zombie Diaries is a low-budget independent film by Kevin Gates and Michael Bartlett. The film uses a documentary style of storytelling, the footage being shot on handheld cameras with unpolished dialogue to give it a realistic feeling. The overall quality of the film and the work that went into it has led some to compare it to The Evil Dead.

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The Zombie Diaries include examples of:

• Anyone Can Die: And how. Just about every member of the main cast(s) is killed off.
• Book Ends: the British military at the beginning of the film and then again at the end.
• Boom! Headshot!: As with usual Zombie Apocalypse situations, it's the only way to ensure they're really dead.
• Can You Hear Me Now: Reception isn't a problem even in the country. The survivors manage to get one or two calls out before services are terminated due to the quickly rising problems. Even the landlines go down.
• Car Fu: Actually van fu, but a couple of survivors are still running over a number of zombies.
• Conspicuous CGI: Averted. Only two scenes use any CGI, and it's overall not very noticeable.
• Daylight Horror: A good portion of the film is shot during the day.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Not counting the beginning sequence with the military, it's just a few seconds after 20 minutes into the film that the first zombie makes an appearance.
• Fingore: One poor bastard gets his fingers amputated with pruning sheers by a sociopath, another's fingers are bitten off after a struggle with a zombie.
• For the Evulz: The reason Gokei and his bud are so willing to torture others.
• Genre Savvy: The survivors seem to understand that the only way to put down a zombie is to shoot them in the head, and that a bite is lethal. Whether they know this because of zombie pop culture in general or because of things they've seen is open for debate.
• Hope Spot: the British military at the beginning and the end of the film would suggest that the outbreak is being combated and there might be a chance of recovering.
• Humans Are Bastards: The zombies are the least of their problems.
• Infant Immortality: Averted. Everyone can die, including children.
• Improvised Weapon: Averted. Nobody seems to think of using any random object to combat the walking dead.
• Jittercam: Justified, since the cameras are handheld and all the Londoners are running for their lives at some point.
• Not a Zombie: During "Scavengers" the group find what they believe is a fully dead corpse on the ground. However later it gets up and moves from the sight it was left at.
• Our Zombies Are Different: At first glance they seem like the traditional slow moving, flesh eating zombies that have almost become cliche. However throughout the film we're given instances in which they seem quite different from the likes of Romero's and others. Some will remain in a fixed position for long periods of time, others will lay down and pretend to be "dead" only to get back up after being disturbed. And there's supposedly something special about how their eyes shine.
• The Load: Anybody who's in charge of the video camera during the world falling apart. While others are fighting they're just standing there and taping everything.
• The Virus: Nobody knows exactly where the virus came from, how it's transmitted, how it works, it doesn't even have a name. All anybody knows is that the first reported cases came from Asia, and its molecular structure is similar to that of the common cold.
• Throw It In: As much as the film was scripted and done with numerous takes, a good number of scenes were improvised and add libbed.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Naturally.
• Zombie Gait: Played straight and averted. Most zombies are very slow and lumbering in nature, others seem to be standing still. However some zombies seem to just come out of nowhere and sneak up on the survivors.
• Zombie Infectee: Played with. Nobody who gets bitten really tries to hide their infection or pretend that everything's all right. Rather, the victims recognize that they're pretty much done for, but it's everyone else who doesn't want to admit it.