The movie begins at the scene of a supposed murder in which an immigrant killed his wife,
his son and then himself.
We view this from the perspective of a TV news cameraman.
As the bodies are wheeled away from a drab residential building on stretchers, the man
behind the camera spots movement.
Within seconds, the murdered wife has sprung from her stretcher and bitten the nearest
person on her neck.
Her son then also rises from the dead.
In the chaos that ensues the newscaster in front of the camera also falls victim to them
and is tended to by the cameraman.
What is going on?
This is Movie Shortens.
Follow us today to a movie titled: Diary of the Dead for the answer.
Be aware: there are spoilers!
Following the opening credit, we see a series of clips clearly cut from the TV news.
Jason’s film is then introduced by Debra.
She explains how and why it was made.
That the music was only added for effect.
she wishes to scare us into avoiding making the same mistakes they did and that the purpose
of the movie is to tell us the truth.
The news, she tells us, has been hiding this.
Cutting to a dark and spooky area of woodland, we witness a mummy, played by Ridley, chasing
a woman in a white dress, Tracy, through the trees.
Jason, who has always wanted to be a documentary filmmaker, is shooting a horror movie.
Tracy complains as to why, in such movies, the woman always falls out of her dress and
loses her shoes.
They are being watched over by their professor, Andrew Maxwell.
At this point, their attention is turned to the news, by Eliot.
Turning on the radio, they hear stories of dead people coming back to life in hospitals
and biting the living.
Unwilling to be caught up in this, Ridley makes to leave, in his drop top car, accompanied
by Francine.
The others soon follow his lead.
With the shoot over for now, Jason attempts to track down his girlfriend Debra in her
university dormitory.
However, upon arrival he finds it empty, except for a looter.
Debra is still there though, barricaded in her room.
While there, they witness television footage of the zombie apocalypse that seems to be
unfolding in the outside world.
Next we find Jason and Debra in a mobile home, headed for Debra’s family home in Scranton,
with Mary at the wheel.
During this phase of the movie, to their frustration, Jason coerces each person on board to introduce
themselves to the camera.
The party includes a reluctant participant, Tony from Queens, and Tracy’s boyfriend
Gordo as well as the aforementioned professor and Eliot.
Not long into the journey, they spot a couple of cars burning in the road.
A cop emerges from behind them and walks towards the trailer.
It soon becomes apparent that he is severely burnt and stumbles towards them.
Riddled with fear, they drive away, with Mary mowing down several more dead people as she
does so.
Soon Jason suggests they pull over, as he continues filming Mary.
She is clearly distraught.
Exciting the vehicle, Mary walks away from it and into a nearby field where she sits
down.
She then shoots herself in the head.
The others are shocked to find that she had a gun, which they take, and that she also
still has a pulse.
Gathering her up, they decide to rush her to hospital.
When they arrive at the hospital, they find it deserted.
They call out for help, hoping to find a doctor or a nurse.
When they do so, it is clear the doctor and nurse are already infected.
Gordo shoots them both in the head, as the group discover this to be the only effective
way to suppress them.
Jason, realizing his battery is low, stays behind with Mary to charge his camera as the
others go off in search of help.
As they do so, he hears shots.
Debra then returns with a camera which she has recovered from the dead people they’ve
just shot and she points this at Jason.
When the rest of the party return, they come under attack once again, with Gordo sustaining
a bite to the arm.
Eliot, however, takes care of the zombie with a metal pole.
Mary too shows the signs of becoming a zombie and they sadly dispense with her too.
The friends decide to honor their dead with proper burials so we cut to them in a field
making a grave for Mary and Gordo, who has now passed.
Tracy refuses to let Tony shoot her boyfriend until they can be sure he’ll turn, so they
wait.
When he does begin to stir, it is Tracy herself who executes him from close range.
Maxwell, meanwhile, clearly disturbed by events continues to sip from his hip flask.
Back on the road once again, the group are forced to make an unscheduled stop to tend
to their vehicle.
Here they encounter a deaf Amish man named Samuel.
Samuel takes them in and provides assistance, and also saves them from a number of approaching
assailants by hurling a stick of dynamite in their direction.
Despite having taken refuge in a barn, the group are eventually surrounded and have to
fight their way out.
Samuel sadly falls victim to the dead people as the others flee.
Their next stop comes at a gas station, with fuel running low.
Here the group find themselves held at gunpoint by three men holding automatic rifles.
Its leader, a member of the national guard, tells them he and his men have already syphoned
off the gas.
However, when they ask him for some he agrees and escorts them to a warehouse full of food,
fuel and weapons he and his cohort have looted.
For the first time since he began filming, here Jason is able to access the Internet
so he gets to work editing his footage and uploading it in a back room.
The others, meanwhile, are on the trail of one of the local crew who has apparently become
zombified.
In attempting to track him down, sadly one of the members of the gang is shot.
When Jason and Tony attempt to find their way back, they come face to face with the
deadman.
Tony grabs at a nearby shelf and hits him over the head with the first thing he can
find.
Fortunately this turns out to be a jar of acid.
It slowly eats away his skin and then his brain, ending the threat.
As they are about to depart, with only enough fuel to make it to Scraton, Debra decides
to play hardball.
She asks the leader for more gas, food and weaponry, telling him he has no choice unless
he wishes to kill them.
They won’t, she tells him, leave without this.
He agrees, informing her she is just like him.
The friends select their tools, with the professor opting for a bow and arrow over a gun.
This done, they hit the road once again.
As they do so, some view footage which suggests this crisis has made it as far as Japan.
When the group arrives at Debra’s home, at first it appears that her family have yet
to make it back.
However, slowly they discover signs to suggest they have.
A bloodied and broken video on the passenger’s side of her Dad’s car is the most telling.
Having already figured out her mother must have passed, Debra begins to hunt for her
brother.
She is quickly accosted by him as he jumps on her back and attempts to bite her.
She is saved by the fast actions and incredible accuracy of her professor, as he shoots her
attacker through the head with an arrow, from the bow he acquired at the warehouse.
Next, Debra’s mom pops up from behind the sofa, gnawing on a forearm.
Maxwell takes care of her too.
In their next encounter, the group come face to face with a group of camouflage clad men
in jeeps.
Believing them to be the actual national guard, they welcome them aboard their van.
The men, however, are far from friendly and loot them, seizing all of their food and water
and leaving them only with their weapons.
With the help of Eliot, they make their next and final stop at Ridley’s mansion - a building
he had described as a fortress back on the film set.
When they arrive they are disconcerted to find the front door open.
They venture tentatively inside to find their friend still clad in his mummy costume.
He has been hiding behind a bookcase in a reinforced panic room.
But he suggests there is nothing to worry about.
At this point, Eliot decides to take a bath.
Meanwhile Jason and Debra become increasingly concerned at Ridley’s odd and erratic behavior.
Ridley eventually admits that his parents, their domestic workers and Francine have all
been bitten and he claims to have buried them.
He leads Jason and Debra out into the yard and back inside his pool house, where the
zombies can be seen in the water.
The couple begin to suspect Ridley has been bitten and their suspicions are confirmed
when he soon begins to turn.
He is seen through CCTV footage collapsing in a doorway.
Outside at the front of the mansion, Mary is unpacking the bags from the mobile home.
As Ridley turns up, she asks for a hand, failing to notice he is stumbling like the dead people.
Jason sees this and tells her to run.
As she tries to get away through the woods, Jason films Ridley in pursuit, in a situation
resembling the movie the three of them had been working on earlier.
And, in much the same cliched manner shed mentioned, Tracy loses her shoes and, briefly,
her dress as Ridley snatches at her.
Eventually, however, Jason decides to help by creating a distraction and Tracy bludgeons
him with a hunk of wood.
She then makes for her vehicle and drives away, jokingly telling Jason she’s leaving
him, but he can keep the house.
Back inside, Debra and Jason debate their next move.
Debra is very much in favor of hiding in the panic room, while Jason suggests they use
a car to get away.
Ridley is back on his feet though and attacks Eliot in the bathroom as he is drying his
hair.
At the same time, Tony and a drunken professor rejoin the couple.
The academic has been watching the CCTV cameras and knows they are surrounded.
He picks up a sword from the mantlepiece for protection.
As Tony, Maxwell and Debra gather more weapons and prepare to enter the safe room, they’re
distracted by a noise.
In the next room Jason, who has maintained he must continue his movie, is being mauled
by Ridley.
The professor slays his aggressor with the sword, splicing his head in two.
Then Debra, conscious of what will happen next, follows Jason’s instruction to shoot
him.
We close with a shot of Jason, filming himself in the trailer, explaining how it has been
a gift to document these events and that he plans to give his audience the truth.
And then with Debra, entering the panic room, determined to finish her lover’s movie and
to ensure his work and death do not go to waste.
In the final scenes, we see their house surrounded with zombies, including those that had been
in the pool.
This is accompanied by footage of the inhumane and cruel way many people have been reacting
to these events.
In her final words Debra asks, “are we worth saving?”.
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