10 Horror Films That Tried Something Different (And Failed)

A mere two years after George A. Romero's Land of the Dead bombed, the visionary director tried again, with a found-footage reboot called Diary of the Dead. This instalment follows a group of film students who record the zombie uprising as it's happening, hoping to turn the footage into a lucrative documentary.

Now, some fans might assume Romero took the found-footage approach purely because it was trendy. However, the legendary auteur had intended to make a low-budget horror centred around "emerging media" for years, and saw Diary of the Dead as the perfect vehicle to explore this notion.

Sadly, none of Romero's passion comes through in the finished product. The footage keeps cutting between multiple cameras, so it looks more like a standard horror flick than a documentary. All the shots appear too planned and organised, robbing the scenes of any naturalism or spontaneity.

Unlike Land of the Dead, this reboot isn't just a disappointment. Diary of the Dead is so shoddily put together, viewers would never suspect it was made by the same man who pioneered the zombie genre in the first place.