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Movie Review: Diary of The Dead

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Popular media has been deluged by reality shows and the massive availability of video recording equipment has made everyone a chronicler of sorts. The world has become heaven for the voyeurs who peep into the lives of other people – as seen in Youtube and various blogging sites that chronicle the life of celebrities or even the mundane lives of the normal joes.

This is the kind of world that George Romero wanted to take to task in his newest movie Diary of The Dead.

This latest edition of his zombie series is a rejigging of the whole mythos that began with the seminal cult hit Night of The Living Dead. Diary of The Dead happens right alongside the events that happened in the first movie. A bunch of college film students are shooting a horror film in the woods when reports of the dead coming back to life reach them. They retreat back to their RV and attempt to find a safe place to hide in as the whole world goes upside down.

Romero’s cinema verite style that evokes The Blairwitch Project is very visceral and immediate. Zombie movies, even Romero’s feel fantastical because of the very mythos it presents to the audience. But not Diary of The Dead, the gung-ho reality style makes you feel that the dead suddenly reanimating is entirely possible. You feel more for the people who only have their RV as their flimsy sanctuary. What also helps is that Romero has employed a bunch of “no-name” actors. You get a feeling that these are real people and not paid talent acting out their characters.

This decision to use untested talent is also the biggest flaw of the movie. The way some of the actors react to some of the situations they’re in are just too amateurish sometimes. You know these are greenhorns. I guess Romero is also partly to blame for this. Managing his actors better would have resulted in a more believable film. As it is, it’s the very actors in the film that occasionally shatter the illusion that what we’re watching is an actual documentary. In a sense this is where The Blairwitch Project really excelled. The movie had three tyro actors that really knew how to act and they helped sell the movie.

The effects employed in the movie are quite superb and believable despite the shoestring budget. It may not be the big budget gorefest that Land of The Dead was but the effects were not only passable, they were even quite realistic at some point. Romero has made some setpieces and imagery that will become part of the zombie canon. I especially loved the floating zombies in the indoor pool. It was a dreamlike vision that is made horrifying knowing that it was someone’s family down there.

Diary of The Dead is a flawed movie but it is still a cut above the rest of many of the horror movies that Hollywood has been churning out. It may polarize many moviegoers but for me, this is a worthy addition to the Romero zombie mythology.

Rating: B –

Romero starts filming new zombie movie

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Director George Romero is set to make another zombie movie. Principal photography for the as yet untitled film has begun. As most Romero zombies go (except for Land of The Dead) this movie will feature not so popular actors.
The movie will reportedly be set on an island located off the North American coast. The residents of the island witness their relatives coming back from the dead and laying havoc to the community. The leaders then get into a moral dilemma of whether to kill their reanimated relatives or to keep them in a safe place in the hope that a cure can be found.

George Romero to work on another zombie movie

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George Romero is the acknowledged master of the zombie movie. Almost all of his Living Dead series are hits both in the box office and critically. His last zombie movie, Island of The Dead, was not as well received as the previous installments but this is not stopping Romero from taking another stab at the zombie genre.
The director has revealed that he has optioned the novel The Zombie Autopsies, which was written by Harvard psychologist Steven Scholzman. [Read more…]