Diary of the Dead

By Serena Whitney
February 19, 2008

There were many things I regretted not doing in 2007, although 99 percent of those things are far too personal to share, I can definitely admit one of my regrets; and that is not getting to see the TIFF premiere of Romero's latest film Diary of The Dead last September. My friends who had went to see the film festival premiere had blew it up to be the most brilliant, most controversial, and most goriest entry in Romero's popular Dead series. Well they were right about one thing....it definitely was gory.

Diary of the Dead is about a film crew shooting an amateur mummy movie for a school project under the supervision of their very inebriated professor (Scott Wentworth). After they discover the world is in fact being taken over by zombies, the student film director Jason Creed (Joshua Close) decides to film their terrifying journey of trying to stay alive for the public to see. His very disapproving girlfriend Debra, (Michelle Morgan) later pieces together and re-edits the footage taken from the crew's cameras, camera phones, blogger clips, and security tapes to make a film called The Death of Death.

What I always appreciated about George A. Romero's Dead franchise is his clever way of examining current social issues in a satirical manner (many fans will love the "zombies should walk slow" bit). Never are his Dead movies just about zombies taking over the earth, but rather how our society has also been taken over by a real-life infection created by us. In his fifth installment, Romero decides to observe our fixation of becoming media whores through blogging and popular social networking groups such as Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube. The protagonists in the story become so consumed by the need to film the horror going on around them, that their need for survival (and the need for their friends' survival) starts to disappear. As soon as these characters have a camcorder in their hands, the audience knows they don't need to get bitten by one of the undead to get infected. They have already infected themselves with their obsession of becoming mindless voyeurs.

Unfortunately, the praise for the well thought and original concept cannot save the many flaws this movie had. Though this movie was shot on multiple hand held cameras, unlike the popular "hand-held" horror movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, it lacked the whole "jerky and jittery" camerawork we are all used to seeing. Although the threat of motion sickness is gone, so are the scares and the anxiety of watching "seemingly" real events.

Another one of the film key flaws was its cast. Not one of the main cast members made me feel like what I was watching was real. They all looked like they were acting. They made me fully aware I was watching a scripted, choreographed, and dare I say a film done by an all Canadian cast. Performances like the ones in this film are the reasons why Canadian films have such a bad reputation.

Though the kills in this movie were well thought out and made the audience scream out in morbid joy, Romero fans will find it a tad disappointing of his abundant use of computer generated imagery when it came down to displaying the bloody and gory bits (which are truly the most memorable parts of the film).

Last but not least, the heavy-handedness of the message Romero was trying to get across became a tad bit annoying and redundant from time to time. The social and political commentary that was so cleverly put underneath the surface in his previous installments are now shoved down our throats, and unfortunately this time around, it becomes a little hard to swallow. Maybe if the movie did not constantly hit us over the heads with how our society have become mindless drones who sit in front of our computer screens, maybe I wouldn't have been in such a hurry after the screening to sit in front of my own to write this review.

Diary of the Dead is no where near the caliber of the original Dead trilogy, (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead) however it still surpasses 2005's big budgeted Land of the Dead. Although its unique take on the new 'hand held' subgenre was impressive, it would have had a far bigger impact on its audience if it had taken the "less is more" route. Diary of the Dead is a beautifully shot horror film, yet at the end, I still somehow walked out of the screening with a bitter after taste of undead rotting flesh in my mouth.

Limited Release Date: February 15, 2008
Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Director: George A. Romero
Producers: Sam Englebardt, Peter Grunwald, Ara Katz, Art Spigel
Executive Producers: Steve Barnett, Dan Fireman, John Harrison
Screenplay: George A. Romero
Director of Photography: Adam Swica
Editor: Michael Doherty
Music: Norman Orenstein