The Zombie Diaries 2 is a found footage film. I am not dismissive of the sub-genre, particularly since I include mockumentaries (I consider them closely related). Movies like The Blair Witch Project, This is Spinal Tap, [Rec] and Punishment Park use the format to great advantage, giving the illusion of immediacy and a heightened sense of reality, even in unreal situations. Zombie Diaries 2 is not in the same ballpark as these movies. It's not even playing the same game.
Set a few months after a zombie-spawning virus has spread across the world, the story centers on a small group of soldiers and a single civilian who are making their way across England, in the hope of finding transportation to the imagined safety of mainland Europe. Along the way, they encounter a depraved group of survivors who are marauding across the countryside, as well as groups of zombies, hungry for human flesh. Added urgency is provided when the commanding officer of the group tells them that England is going to be subjected to a sustained bombardment, as it is the worst hit area in Europe. When the handful of survivors make it to a coastal base, they find that the base is deserted...except for the zombies of course. One man makes it out and encounters a pair of refugees from the mainland who tell him that things are no better there. The end.
As far as a concept for a zombie story goes, this isn't bad. As I was watching it, I could imagine how this would play out on the page and how it might read as coherent and worthwhile. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, the potential of the story is not translated to the screen. This film is a complete disaster, an exercise in lazy film-making.
I'll leave aside that it looks cheap. It is a low-budget movie after all. The make-up effects are okay, no worse than many other low-budget horror films out there. They look pretty bad compared to The Walking Dead; but not to the point where they detract from the film. Also, the last 90 seconds, where the film breaks out of the "found footage" format actually looks good and creates an appropriately bleak conclusion. That's where the good stuff ends.
Plotholes, abound, the most egregious of which takes place in the first five minutes. The film begins in a secure military base. However, the filmmakers wanted to kill off most of the characters and get the survivors on the move. Okay, that's a fairly standard film trope, one that I don't have a problem with. It is the way it is executed in this movie that makes no sense. One night, the main gate is left open. Why? How? That is never explained. It is such an obvious and non-nonsensical plot device, that it makes one wonder if the filmmakers have contempt for their audience.
It gets worse. The problem with found footage films is that you need an excuse for the camera man to keep filming when a normal person would stop and do something else. This movie fails miserable in this regard. We do know why the cameraman is making a film; he is a military videographer stationed at the base, creating a record for posterity. That makes sense; the problem arises as the story unfolds. The cameraman, an armed soldier, keeps filming even when his comrades are being torn apart. This makes no sense. Even worse, at no point does anyone bring this up. In some movies in this sub-genre, there is at least a moment when the filmmakers acknowledge the artificiality of the artistic conceit ("Why don't you put that camera down?" "Someone has to document the zombie/giant monster/angry broccoli attack."). It may make no sense; but at least there is the attempt. In The Zombie Diaries2 we get nothing. There are easy - and obvious - fixes for this. Here's one for free; don't make him a soldier. Just make him a civilian, someone who has never handled a gun in his life, someone who uses the camera as his defense/distancing mechanism. In Zombie Diaries 2, you get the feeling that the filmmakers were just too lazy to bother coming up with a rationale.
The story also treats us to an unpleasant and stereotyped rape scene. Sexual assault in a movie can be a powerful and appropriate moment. Think of Deliverance and Irreversible; in those cases the sexual assault is integral to the story. No matter how graphic it is, the viewer understands the story-driven reason for why it is happening. Here, it seems like an excuse to show some violence against a woman, show some tits, indulge in the stereotype of the "simple-minded boy being made a man" by having sex and make the villains more reprehensible in one of the easiest ways possible. It's not even the ugliness of the scene that it is a problem...it's just so dumb and pointless that it feels like filler.
The editing of the film makes little sense. Most of the story is shown in a linear fashion, with the camera showing the events leading from the base to the coast (the rape is filmed by the attackers who have taken the soldiers captive). Intercut with this linear film are scenes from a massacre of civilians the soldiers participated in before the movie begins. Why are these scenes there? I understand why they are there for the story; what doesn't make sense is why they are interspersed with the movie that is being filmed. The cameraman would literally have to be editing in the "flashback" scenes. That makes no sense at all.
Also, who is the audience? Since the cameraman is killed, the camera lost amongst a horde of the undead and England is, apparently, being bombed out of existence, who is watching the movie? Most films in this genre - at least the good ones - have a plot point indicating the audience. In Blair Witch, the film is discovered in the woods; in Cloverfield, the digital camera is discovered in the ruins of New York; with Diary of the Dead, the film is created and released on the Internet. Here...nothing.
If this movie had been filmed conventionally (not as found footage) the story might have been interesting enough to make the film worthwhile. If the found footage aspect had been handled more logically - say the cameraman is being sent out with a squad of soldiers to recon some critical facility (even sticking with the evacuation premise) and is transmitting the images back to a central base - then that conceit could have worked. As it is The Zombie Diaries 2 is an example of lazy, sloppy film-making and should be watched as a good example of how not to make a movie.
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