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

Istvan6 feb 11 2010

This was a wild mix of zombie movie footage thrown together. The sources did not mix well for me. There were lots of contradictions about what was said and what happened on the screen. The breaks all the time were very annoying. parts were edited like a movie, parts were news reports from all over the world, parts were just documentary. Some zombies in the news could run, but what the students shot, they were all Romero zombies: slow. This did not at all improve on the original Diary Of The Dead, which I thought was not so bad. Sure, it had its weak parts and some bad acting, but unlike this bad attempt, it felt like ONE movie and I could enjoy it.
Since the rule here is to leave a statement for a bad rating, I am doing this hereby, even though I do not intend to offend Mollo, whose former works I have enjoyed a lot (especially Killer Horizon). It’s only my point of view that this one did not work for me at all.

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.