Diary of the Dead Review
What would happen if the world was suddenly plunged in massive panic and deadly conflict, disrupting our way of life and crushing our comfortable infrastructure? How would people respond in today's technology age, where everyone seems to have a blog, a MySpace page, and a cell phone with a digital camera on it? Where would we get our information from? Who exactly could we trust?
That's the fascinating premise of George A. Romero's "Diary of the Dead," a film that re-establishes the director's low-budget style and creativity. The starts with a simple set-up: a group of film students are, ironically, shooting an independent horror movie in the woods of Pennsylvania when they discover that the world is suddenly being overrun by zombies. The group, lead by its young, ambitious director Jason Creed, decide to use their video cameras and equipment to document the zombie outbreak and use
Hold on. Let's back up for a minute. Chances are, you've never seen any of Romero's zombie films the whole way through. You may have caught bits and pieces of some on cable, but beyond that, you're unfamiliar with the "Dead" films, not to mention Romero's other works like the alt-vampire thriller "Martin" or the bizarre but underrated "Monkey Shines." While Romero is a true icon, the aging director is sort of like the Velvet Underground of horror movies: few people have actually seen his work, but those that have belong to a dedicated cult following, many of whom were inspired to become filmmakers themselves.
It's been 40 years since Romero's first film, the iconic "Night of the Living Dead," which essentially created the zombie sub-genre of horror films and arguably influenced low budget filmmaking more than any other movie. Romero followed up with the classic "Dawn of the Dead" a decade later and the underappreciated "Day of the Dead" in 1985. The director revisited the series with 2005's "Land of the Dead," which was a big budget, star-filled extravaganza that ended up as a critical and commercial flop.
So what do movie franchises do when things start to go south? They reboot and start over. Like "Batman Begins," "Casino Royale," and even the forthcoming "Star Trek" film, Romero goes back to the beginning. His previous zombie films each dealt with a progressive evolution of the zombie invasion, starting first with the initial outbreak in "Night," the inevitable panic and societal breakdown with "Dawn," the violent, militaristic reaction of "Day," and finally, the restoration of a normal but highly flawed human city in "Land." But with Diary, Romero returns to his roots both literally and figuratively. And the result is the director's best film in years, and perhaps his greatest work since the original "Night of the Living Dead."
From the first scene of the film, I knew "Diary" would be something special, more than just a "Blair Witch Project" clone with zombies. The movie begins at very start of the zombie outbreak and cleverly uses bootlegged footage from a TV news crew covering a murder scene. Suddenly, a corpse rises up from under a white sheet on a gurney. The dead bodies are walking again. And before you know, the female newscaster is attacked by one of the zombies. The scene is gory, but more importantly, it's symbolic: the establishment media, so consumed with blood and guts news, is now dead. And it's now up to the younger, technology-savvy masses to provide information and documentation for the rest of the country, and possibly the world.
Enter Jason and his band of low-budget filmmakers, which includes Debra, his disapproving but level-headed girlfriend; Tracy, a blonde bombshell actress; Tony, an Alpha male crew member; Eliot, a nerdy computer whiz; and Maxwell, the wise but often drunk professor. When the group learns of the spreading undead epidemic, Jason eagerly sets out to create a documentary about the apocalyptic event. In fact, we hardly ever see Jason (played by actor Josh Close) on screen because he's always behind the camera and is content to narrate the events he films with an all-too-earnest voiceover. The group uses two cameras to film the documentary while also supplanting the project with hacked security camera footage, bootlegged news feeds, and occasional videos downloaded from the Internet.
I had my doubts about Romero's hand-held camera approach for "Diary." I didn't particularly enjoy "The Blair Witch Project" (until the gripping finale, that is) with is shaky, inconsistent camera work. Romero uses a steadier hand for "Diary," thankfully, and he uses the approach to absolute perfection in two heart-pounding scenes that involve a seemingly deserted hospital early in the movie and an extremely dark warehouse. Unlike "Land of the Dead," Romero's newest zombie film is quite scary. In fact, it may have the best pure frights of any of Romero's movies.
As the movie progress, Jason becomes increasingly obsessed with documenting every aspect of the group's journey. He never turns the cameras off and, like a paparazzi, is constantly shoving the lens in the faces of his friends and colleagues to get their reactions to the mayhem. Jason, it seems, shares the same kind of frenzied blood lust and desire for spectacles as the establishment news media before him. If it's not on camera, he tells Debra, it's like it never happened.
Part of the reason Jason becomes so fixated on the documentary project is because the group learns that amid the panic and zombie outbreak, the U.S. government is acting like everything is under control while spreading a misinformation campaign about the severity of the situation. Jason, Debra and the others take to the Web in a grass roots campaign to spread awareness about what's going on and how to survive (shoot the zombies in the head!). This is where "Diary" begins to take on a new, more provocative dimension. It's impossible not to make a connection with the government's failure regarding Hurricane Katrina; in fact, the film's promotional and press materials reference the national disaster. When a National Guard unit shows up late in the film, well, you know you're getting a political statement from Romero - though the nature of it surprised me. It's clear Romero still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
The movie features the kind of trademark gore and makeup effects that previous "Dead" films are known for, though Romero does use a bit of computer-generated imagery at certain points with varying degrees of success. "Diary" is also full of dark humor, including one show-stopping moment featuring an old man who can't speak. "Diary" has some flaws, of course. Many of the supporting characters are relegated to caricatures of your typical horror movie characters, which is partly by design. The acting isn't always compelling either (being an independent film, Romero used unknown actors). And finally, a predictable running joke in the film comes to a head in the film's finale, which only slows down the action and distracts from the suspense.
Those points, however, don't change the fact that "Diary of the Dead" is absolutely one of Romero's best films, which is underscored by the entirely woeful state of the horror movie genre in Hollywood. American audiences have been bombarded over the last decade with cheap remakes (the deplorable "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Hills Have Eyes" are just two examples) and awful torture-gore flicks like "Hostel" and "Captivity." The number of good - let alone great - horror movies in recent years has been small compared to the muck that's churned out on a regular basis.
"Diary of the Dead," on the other hand, is frightening, suspenseful, occasionally funny and always thought-provoking. Horror movies fans like myself need this kind of quality. We cannot be content to feast on the sporadic helpings of great horror films like Neil Marshall's "The Descent" or Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" every few years. It's especially pleasing to see that an artist like Romero can ditch the big-budgets and Hollywood polish and return to independent filmmaking. His latest film has the kind of honesty and personal style that the director exhibited with his first zombie films. If you're wondering why Romero is such an icon, "Diary of the Dead" should answer the question, and then some.
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