Available only at Blockbuster, and now on sale used at many Blockbuster location's 2 for $20 bargain bin, Diary of the Dead is George Romero's most effective zombie movie since the original Dawn of the Dead.

It tries the look like a documentary, which would have worked if it weren't for the fact that everything seems so scripted. The actors never talk over each other, many of the zombie attacks (and gory zombie deaths) that come off as forced, and the general level of ridiculousness the film reaches for is at times too much even for a zombie movie.

That's the bad news.

The good news is the characters are often quite likable, the script is relatively unpredictable, and the message of the movie truly resonates with our modern, Youtube (and Pornhub) infused times. Diary of the Dead is at it's absolute best when the on screen characters have their mouth's firmly shut as they are watch tv, check Youtube, or listen to the radio, focused on finding out how badly the world is doing. The news they find on the budding zombie apocalypse is extremely well done in terms of both tone and believability, with a few of the bits recorded by Gulliermo Del Toro, Simon Pegg, and Stephen King.

These parts of the film were genuinely effective, and more than make up for it's weaker moments. If the World War Z film ever materializes, I hope that it's just like the "media" segments of Diary of the Dead, except fleshed out with real documentary style "acting" and big budget special effects.

As it stands, if you like zombie movies, you should see Diary of the Dead. I know I'll watch it again someday, maybe even soon. It doesn't have that consistent sense of dread, of cold, gripping terror that both the Dawn film's offered. However, what Diary of the Dead offers is so totally different from the Dawn films, it almost seems unfair to compare them. Besides, I already own two version of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Those stories, as great as they are, have been told enough.

If on merits of it's originality alone, Diary of the Dead deserves to exist, flaws and all. Along with Shaun of the Dead and Fido, it's stands as one of the few zombie films of the past few years which doesn't feel like a rehash or a retelling of a previous film. Lets just hope the relative financial failure of those last two movies doesn't put the kibosh on the continuing evolution of zombies in Hollywood.