George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut

lairilwa fab 10 2010

I consider fan edits a new underground art movement. This is a perfect example of such where the author has taken bits from a few different sources and made a new product. This is much more tense then the original and you find yourself much more sympathetic towards the characters. The poorly delivered lines have been removed along with beating us over the head with a ‘message’ for the movie. In fact, its much more subtle now with a single reference: Technology is great… until it stops working… that’s all you need! That’s much more in tune with the original trilogy where you can ‘see’ a message there if you choose to, but no one is on a soap box. What the author Mollo removed made for a much tighter story and no ‘moronic’ actions on the character’s part. They make some mistakes and that’s enough. It feels like we are following along with a group during a crisis.

From a technical standpoint the editing was good but the scene used from Dawn of the Dead remake extras- where the doctor is showing the reporter the zombie strapped down- there is a boom mike shot. You may wish to crop this footage slightly to remove that.

Great job. This is why I seek out fan edits. To see different visions of movies that originally were not entirely successful. It looks like you put a lot of hard work and time into this.

xgrind feb 14 2010

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

zeppelinrox mar 8 2010

Although some news footage inserted into the main story is distracting, it is still much better than the original Diary of the Dead.
The only thing that really seems out of place is a couple of instances of fast moving zombies.

Overall, the faster pace and no boring/crappy narration is a huge improvement over the original.

I did kind of miss the blonde texan chick’s character development, as I came to really like her in the original, but it’s all for the best.

As boon stated, points are lost on the presentation.

Overall, 8 out of 10

boon23 feb 11 2010

Prologue:
I finished watching this fanedit this afternoon, but did not have the time to comment on it yet – also was not sure what to write. However, the comment/review by Istvan6 on fanedit.org makes me want to write down my own impressions. I have a split opinion when it comes to Mollo fanedits. This does not mean that they are not all great for someone else, but for me they are sometimes terrific and sometimes not so terrific. I am a huge fan of his LAND OF THE DEAD fanedit – and it is still one of my favorite fanedits of all-time. Now Mollo is back to editing Romero – and of course I was excited about this. I did not hate DIARY OF THE DEAD as much as LOTD, but it was an unimportant movie, which I easily could and also wanted to forget about. Some neat shocks, some interesting stuff from the zombie universe, yet nothing innovative, some truly bad acting, some truly bad scenes. The most amateurish movie Romero ever made. His attempt to jump on the “docu-live-footage” train in the spirit of Blair Witch, Cloverfield, REC and now Paranormal Activity is weak, because his actors did hardly ever behave like real people.
So I sat down and watched “Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut”, not sure what Mollo could have done to it, because I had not read the list of changes to have an unspoiled watching experience.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
My biggest disadvantage when watching this fanedit is that I am a zombie buff. Mollo mixed a lot of sources and I discovered and recognized them all so easily. It was a tough one to get into the movie and sense its own atmosphere, when it contained so much known footage. The beginning has a lot of scenes from News reports – and these soon raise the one question, who actually edited that video. This question remains active for the most part of this fanedit and it does not get answered. The students, who are obviously the leading characters of the movie film their own documentary. It is nowhere said that they combined it with other news. The news reports have very different quality and aspect ratio, which I think should have been corrected for a more consistent viewing. Also the news reports are in the way I got it, often more progressed in the action than the students. When finally after a few minutes the students appear for the first time on their c-horror film set, they also hear news, which are describing the awakening dead as a mistake, which contradicts what was shown in the news reports before. There are lots and lots of breaks throughout the beginning (and later on). Mollo uses them as a style to make the footage appear even rawer than it originally was. But why do some of the student scenes have score? I know this was a critique of the original movie as well, but in this case it gets even more obvious and feels even more wrong.
The students get into the van and start their ride, the zombie action starts pretty soon with a burned cop zombie and 3 people who were run over by the car, which was obviously not the one of the students, especially because the scene was not properly introduced to make the driver#s reason to just and without breaking run them over plausible.
Plausibility is one of the weaknesses of this fanedit anyway. A lot of scenes were cut and by this also took away the life and motivation from the characters. The interruptions by the news reporters also took away from the “live” atmosphere.
I found the first 30 minutes of this movie confusing and a bit boring. Too much reports, not enough of the students. This gets better later on. The more we see of the students, the better the fanedit is and I for one was able to stay entertained enough to enjoy some parts – especially when they are at the one girl’s home and she gets attacked by her brother and mother. The barn scene with the farmer before was weird, because the farmer was not introduced at all and dies without having said a single word. This felt wrong.
The ending worked kind of well and kept me entertained. I enjoyed the beginning of the end credits that were too long in the end for me to stay put.
So, while this edit does have a lot of flaws and inconsistencies I see it also as a great experiment that kept me entertained. It is not superior to the original, yet I consider it not a waste of time for a zombie fan to give it a watch.
editing: 7 of 10 (a lot of forced cuts that were meant as a means of style, but did not work for me. Some inconsistencies in the plot, some news footage contradicts the Romero universe (“some lose the ability to speak”, running zombies), end credits were too long).
entertainment: 6 of 10 (I was a bit entertained to watch it. Some scenes and styles annoyed me or did not work for me, but overall it was pleasing)(original: 6 of 10)

Image and video quality:
I watched the DVD, so I was expecting great quality, especially because a high bitrate was used. Image quality was overall ok, but the news reports should have been anamorphic and the colors corrected to make ti all better fit together.)
Video quality: 7 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was great. Mollo is an audio specialist and it shows. I did not like the additional Dawn Of The Dead music, but it was ok, where it was.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
This release is barebones with cover art. No menus, no extras. Nice starting and end credits. The music was a bit too loud on the end credits. The info on FE was quite detailed and comes with a nice trailer.
10 stars maximum -3 for missing menus, -2 for missing extras.
To sum it up:
A lot of room for a better presentation, especially the menus were really missed. Info, cover art, trailer and credits were nice. This could have easily been great.
resulting in a 5 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 7 of 10
This can be enjoyed by Zombie and Romero fans.

joebshmoe may 27 2010

*This rating was given before reviews were required*