George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead - Good, ol’ zombie fun! (*******7/10)
The premise behind Diary of the Dead seems like old hat. In fact, it seems unbearably lame, the Frankenstein-monster piecing together of all the modern successful horror movies, thrown into a pot and stirred and spit out in six hours. However, the director is very intriguing. George A. Romero is one of the all-time great directors not just in horror, but in cinema. And with Diary of the Dead, he returns to his uber-successful roots, the zombie flick. Romero is the genius behind such zombie classics as the one that started it all, Night Of The Living Dead, and the one that many would suggest perfected the genre, Dawn of the Dead. (The original, not the poorly-thought-out crazy-kinetic 2005 sequel.) So the question with Diary of the Dead was this: Which Romero was going to show up? The one who made many of the most classic and original zombie movies of all time, or the one who jumped on the fast-moving zombie bandwagon and laid the turd that was that recent Land of the Dead?
Diary of the Dead is shot like Blair Witch, and Cloverfield. First-person, hand-held camera narrative, where the guy with the camera keeps it on because either “it’s the only thing keeping me sane in all this chaos”, or “if this turns out to be something big I want to record it for posterity”. Which is always a lame explanation for continuing to film during a monster attack or a scary time in the woods, but in the end, they’re the only explanations that work. The first good news - Romero has reverted to the slow-moving zombies of yore. The second good news, in fact, great news - Romero retains his sense of social commentary and political bent throughout this movie. This is something he has never lost, and it exists as much in the tone of his movies as it does in the actual story and dialogue. In this case, the entire construct of the film is a commentary on the media itself. The set-up tells us that this is the story the mainstream news media will not tell you, that this film is the only way to find out what really happened.
And what really happened is awesome! The dead are genuinely creepy, the scares are real, and the dialogue is terrific. It’s that classic Romero dialogue, that borders on the cheesy in making it’s point, but it works nearly every time. The voiceovers are suitably amateurish, and the best speeches about the nature of violence and war and the capabilities of individual men to confront their worst fears come from the film professor who accompanies the protagonists. The one, key line that is repeated more than once, refers to a gun. Three different characters hand it off to someone else saying “here, take this. It’s too easy to use.” There is some great black humour, suitable only for the zombie movie genre, like the bit with the deaf Amish guy who blows up some zombies with dynamite.
After a while, however, the voiceover narration from the girl who (obviously) has survived the zombie massacre becomes pretty tiresome, since it all seems so obvious and cliched. And there are a few scenes that are nothing new, in fact they are so familiar it’s almost insulting in the middle of a movie like this one. Like the one where a girl gets attacked by her own zombified family member and doesn’t know what to do, and the scenes where the military who show up to save the day might be too good to be true…but all in all, it works. Diary of the Dead is a quality film from a quality director who hasn’t lost a step. It’s impossible to make another Night Of The Living Dead. Once Romero made that one, he changed the zombie game for everyone, including himself. And he can’t make another Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead either. So he makes a Diary of the Dead and adds to his already considerable legacy. Diary of the Dead comes out Tuesday May 20th from Alliance Films.