Diary of the Dead
Written and Directed by: George A. Romero
Starring: Joshua Close, Scott Wentworth, Michelle Morgan

After a brief brush with bigger budgets and bigger stars in Land of the Dead, the godfather of the zombie genre has returned to the comfort of his independent filmmaking roots with Diary of the Dead. And what better way to justify a low budget look and feel than to shoot the movie in a documentary-style in the vein of The Blair Witch Project? Diary of the Dead joins movies like Cloverfield, Spanish film REC, and its English language remake Quarantine in a new wave of first-person horror flicks, made all the more relevant in this era of cell phone cameras and YouTube.

Although Diary of the Dead follows the same naming convention as all of Romero’s previous zombie flicks, it’s not a continuation or sequel. He has reset the counter back to zero once again, starting from when the very first reports of “living dead” crop up. A group of college students are out shooting a horror movie of their own when they hear the disturbing news about a zombie outbreak. From here it turns into a road trip of sorts, as they attempt to drive home in an old Winnebago to find their family and friends. Along the way, director Jason Creed seizes the opportunity to capture the horrific events on camera in order to create his ultimate cinematic masterpiece.

The acting is kind of questionable throughout, but as a low budget zombie movie, Diary of the Dead works. It is filled with loads of gore and great-looking zombies; indeed, on that level, there are few who can match George Romero. The road trip element adds a sense of adventure, and there are some wonderful moments of dark humour too (at one point, a deaf amish guy is almost mistaken for a zombie).

Where Diary of the Dead stumbles is the over-justification of the handheld camera format, and the heavy-handed attempts to make it a “message movie”. Romero has always been great at inserting social commentary into his films, but this time it just feels really forced — which is too bad because I don’t think he realized that in this case, the medium really is the message.

In the intro, we are told that we will be watching real footage that has been edited and enhanced for more drama, with music added at certain points in order to scare us. Right then and there, you know that the movie isn’t fully committed to the verite style.

We learn that the guy behind the camera is an aspiring filmmaker, which adds an interesting twist and explains the motivation behind him wanting to record everything. And yet, still they keep making excuses throughout the film for why this guy feels the need to keep taping. At times his obsession is stretched a bit too far; in one scene early on, the camera’s batteries run out, so instead of following his friends he stays behind in another room so that he can record nothing but the sounds of them screaming in the distance with the camera plugged into the wall.

If Jason isn’t asking people to repeat lines they’ve just uttered, his friends are constantly asking him “Why are you still taping this?”, or sarcastically saying things like, “I know you’ll want to get this conversation on camera”. There’s simply no way to forget that you’re supposed to be watching footage that was shot by one of the characters in the movie, and it works against the immersiveness of the film… as a result I didn’t find it particularly engrossing or scary. There are also points in the movie where there are two cameras shooting footage simultaneously, and they often turn the lenses on each other. I guess Romero wanted to really get across the feeling that we’re surrounded by media, but it just got to be a bit much.

One thing I did like was the incorporation of surveillance cam footage into the final film, and the fact that the characters were occasionally shown editing and uploading footage on the fly from a laptop, as a way of interacting with other survivors and providing an alternative to mainstream news sources. I also liked the intercut news footage and radio broadcasts (many of which feature the voice cameos from other big name horror stars), which successfully conveyed a sense of impending apocalypse without really showing any large scale scenes of chaos.

Still, even though I dig the concept behind this movie, Diary of the Dead doesn’t execute as well I hoped it would. Both The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield proved that this format can be highly effective for creating suspense, and maybe it’s the fact that both of those movies did such a good job that Diary of the Dead is taken down a notch in my book. On the other hand, people who couldn’t get into either of those movies because of the shaky footage won’t have to worry about motion sickness here.

In the end, Romero feels a bit like he’s out of his element here, and although it was an ambitious concept, I don’t think it ever manages to overcome its artificial structure. The movie is so concerned about showing off the handheld gimmick and commenting on it that it forgets to let go and give us a good old-fashioned fright flick as well. It’s worth a watch, but definitely falls short of being a classic.

The DVD does come packed with extras though, including 5 short zombie films that were selected as the winners of a MySpace contest (one of which stars Teller from Penn & Teller). There’s also, an audio commentary track, a feature length making-of documentary, and some “confessionals” from the various characters that was not used in Jason Creed’s movie. Romero fans will still find plenty to sink their teeth into, even if the main feature is a bit disappointing. — Sean

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