Review of Night of the Living Dorks

"Die Nacht der lebenden Loser" is a German movie from 2004, so this one will have its 15th anniversary two years from now. The writer an director of this 90-minute movie is Matthias Dinter and if you take a look at his body of work, then you probably already can roughly estimate the quality to expect here. Or I should say the lack of quality. The script is a mess and the "actors" add their best (worst) to sink this film even further. Even the likes of Henry Gründler who may be a talented comedian are just no quality performers in terms of film acting, even if it is comedy. There are many familiar names in here, but they are all more entertainers than actors. Then again, the actors aren't any better. Just taking a look at the lead trio here, they are all basically interchangeable with their performances and absolutely nothing about their characters stands out at all. Not through the acting. Not through the writing. This is the story of three teenagers who turn into zombies after a fateful coincidence of events. But this transformation was needed for them to find out who they really are and who/what really matters to them. Finally, the likes of actors like Hendrik Borgmann (GZSZ) or other actors whose most known credits is "Sturm der Liebe" being in here says it all about the quality of the cast. There were just so many scenes when the dialogues did not feel authentic at all, but written and thus exactly what they were. You never had the impression you were watching actually existing characters (of course there are fantasy elements, but still) and the actors sure didn't make things better. And they also never came off like zombies, just like people with pretty weak zombie make-up on them. Now if this had at least been somewhat charming with the romance element attached to it and the way the central character and Ulmen's get together, but it was all predictable and for the sake of it and once again the lack of talent in acting and writing makes this painful to watch. The genuine drama moments like the knife scene at the end are ones where the film actually dares to take itself seriously despite how garbage it is. If people say films today here in Germany are worse than 15 years ago, they need to check out this one because it refutes the theory completely on its own. And still it is pretty famous still even today, most certainly the most known work by almost everybody involved with the project and that shows how much people are curious about zombie movies. But there is not a single reason to love this one. It is a huge mess and a definite contender for worst 2004 film. I highly recommend to stay far far away from any copy of "Night of the Living Dorks".