the blog of nathan loding

Diary Of The Dead (2007)
Star­ring: Joshua Close, Scott Went­worth, Michelle Mor­gan
Directed by: George Romero
Writ­ten by: George Romero
Rated: R
Rat­ing: **** (four stars out of five)

Romero rev­o­lu­tion­ized hor­ror films with his clas­sic (I’d say time­less) Dead tril­ogy: Night Of The Liv­ing Dead (1968), Dawn Of The Dead (1978), and Day Of The Dead (1985). The tril­ogy chron­i­cled mankind’s attempt to sur­vive a never-ending onslaught of slow-moving, flesh-eating, brain-loving zom­bies. Need­less to say, the movies are bloody and full of fan­tas­tic scenes of gore, but they also con­tain a sig­nif­i­cant amount of social com­men­tary, but this review isn’t about that. In 2005, Romero brought us Land Of The Dead, which failed to meet the expec­ta­tions of most fans, mine included. Thus, while I love Romero, when I heard a new Dead movie was to be com­ing out, I was extremely hesitant.

For­tu­nately, I loved it.

Tak­ing a page from the mod­ern film­mak­ing cliche of using hand­held cam­eras for a first-person POV, Romero has crafted a fine zom­bie flick. While Clover­field (2008) failed with it’s nau­se­at­ing over-use of the hand­held style, Diary avoids that same pit­fall by mix­ing in sta­tic secu­rity cam­era footage and sta­ble news shots in with the first-person per­spec­tive. It’s put together extremely well as far as that goes — my only com­plaint with the tech­nique was that the edi­tor use the “blip” effect way too often, streak­ing snowy lines across the screen for some effect that missed. Any­one who’s shot in HD knows that the dig­i­tal cam­eras don’t “blip” like that.

The premise is all to sim­ple: A group of col­lege film­mak­ers at the Uni­ver­sity of Pitts­burgh and their sophis­ti­cated, alco­holic pro­fes­sor, doc­u­ment the arrival of the undead as they attempt to travel to ones fam­ily home. Sim­ple, but enough to throw in some zom­bies. Deb (Mor­gan) is con­cerned about her parent’s well-being and they begin dri­ving towards Scran­ton, PA, in their friends RV. The char­ac­ter­i­za­tions are obvi­ous, from the unbe­liever to the softy-who-can-kill-when-needed.

The worst case of uno­rig­i­nal­ity is Jason Creed (Close), who is the man behind the cam­era for much of the 95 minute run­time. He inabil­ity to empathize and his refusal to set the cam­era down is painful to lis­ten to at times. How­ever, this is Romero throw­ing in his sub­text again. This film is par­tially about our numb­ness to things and the way that numb­ness grows. While Creed is uno­rig­i­nal and largely bor­ing, his char­ac­ter does, admit­tedly, serve a purpose.

There have been few hor­ror films recently to bring any new wit­ti­cisms or frights to the screen. Most of the garbage put out today just recy­cles the well-known jumps, scares, and gross-out effects, and (sub­text aside) we have become numb to them. Thank God for Romero and his touch of dark orig­i­nal­ity. There are some unique scenes in this movie, and one or two that I will remem­ber for a long time. Every­one knows at this point that destroy­ing a zombie’s brain is the only way to take it down (would it then the un-undead?). Most movies stick with bats, guns, and sharp things to achieve this. Romero had the audac­ity to ask “What about highly con­cen­trated acid?” And most movies stay away from chil­dren zom­bies, let alone watch­ing them get bru­tally re-killed. Again, thank you, George Romero, for say­ing “to hell with that tra­di­tion.” My favorite scene is with Samuel — I will not ruin it, but Samuel has a fine intro­duc­tion and a glo­ri­ous finish.

I rec­om­mend this film, whole-heartedly, to the hor­ror lovers of the world. Is it per­fect? Nah. Is it some­what heavy-handed? Yep. Is it still worth watch­ing? Yes! The unique scenes that Diary bring to the screen are worth it alone.