George A. Romero is a living legend. Having pioneered the zombie subgenre with Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the best horror films of all time, he returned to undead territory with three alleged sequels, Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005), a big-budget studio production. Following the last film’s box office failure, Romero has returned to his independent roots with George A. Romero’s
Diary of the Dead, a reboot to the already tenuously connected series. It’s also his weakest zombie movie to date: dull, tired, and very mistaken in what it thinks is profound. Diary of the Dead comes advertised as “a new vision of terror from the legendary filmmaker.” This “new vision” is the decision to structure the story almost entirely from the perspective of the protagonist’s video camera (he’s documenting the action). Sound familiar? To be fair, Romero’s film made its festival debut several months before a certain J.J. Abrams monster movie did the same idea better. (Back then it only looked like a Blair Witch Project rip-off.)
Apart from this creaky structural innovation, the monotonous plot should be familiar stuff: a group of college students making a cheapie horror flick learn that the dead have risen. They hop into an RV and head for sanctuary. When they arrive, they find zombies, and someone dies. Repeat.
Romero has never been an actor’s director. While this film’s unknown cast don’t exactly humiliate themselves, they recite their awkward dialogue stiffly, the characters painted with such broad strokes that very few make an impression. The unfortunate exception: Scott Wentworth as a middle-aged British professor in charge of delivering ominous pronouncements. He evoked quite a few titters from the audience I saw the film with. Is Wentworth trying to do camp? It certainly doesn’t work within the solemn context of this film.
Romero is known for infusing his horror films with social commentary— Dawn of the Dead famously attacked consumerism by having hordes of zombies heading mindlessly to a shopping mall. At the TIFF Q&A session, Romero said he was interested in exploring a culture that, with the proliferation of YouTube, MiniDV cameras, and blogs, gives everyone the power to be a reporter. Still, Romero does little more than point out that an increasingly democratized media exists. The film hits its lowest points when Romero includes voice-over narration to hammer a few simplistic ideas home, for those who thought the image of zombies in a shopping mall was too subtle.
But what about the zombies? Well, there are some good, gory attacks here and there (dig the flesh-eater that gets his skull burned by acid) but the suspenseful/ horrific moments are shockingly sparse and flat. It breaks my heart to accuse Romero of being behind the times, but compared to something like 28 Weeks Later, the shenanigans of Diary of the Dead feel downright sedate.
While Romero isn’t the subtlest of social commentators, he’s proven himself to be one of the best that the horror genre has, and the clever Bush-era satire of Land of the Dead showed that he still has teeth. The Weinstein Company has expressed interest in making another entry in the Dead series, and as a longtime admirer of Romero’s films, it would be nice to see him get his undead mojo back. As it stands, Diary of the Dead is a stiff.
