Review of Diary of the Dead (2007) by Nikki K — 07 Jun 2010

George A. Romero is one of those filmmakers who shouldn't need an introduction. If you're a horror fan at all, you should be intimately familiar with his Dead series by now. It's no hyperbole to say that Romero essentially invented the zombie movie, gave it the structures and tones that have relentlessly followed the genre through 40 years of movie history. I have always admired the films of Romero and there can be no doubt that he is the godfather who paved the way for the zombieâ??s rising infamy.

Diary Of The Dead, Romero's new movie and latest entry into the 5-part series, is a return to the form and feel of his original classic Night Of The Living Dead. The three movies in between--- the classic Dawn, hit-or-miss Day and severely underrated Land --- showed a world consumed by destruction and fear; already well past the point of no return in an unthinkable apocalypse. Diary takes us back to the beginning, taking place during the first few days of the attacks by documenting how a group of college students cope with the crisis growing around them.

The draw of the movie is that what we're seeing is not presented in a typical film fashion, but rather as a series of homemade video clips created by the characters themselves. While shooting their own low-budget horror movie, the students are interrupted by the sudden, jarring realization that freshly dead bodies are coming back to life and attacking anything that breathes. What follows is a documentation of their quick departure from their suddenly deserted campus and their long trip to home, to safety and any sort of an answer.

If the plot description has you thinking of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, the comparison ends with the initial conceit of horror via home movies. There's no shaky-cam addled suspense here, and you shouldnâ??t ever feel motion sickness. The camera's presence in the movie serves to give a heightened feeling of suspense and immediacy. Unlike most other zombie movies, there's no outside camera telling the story, letting us know where the zombies are and when they're coming. We follow the characters through their own eyes. The threat of danger is always palpable, even when nothing on screen is particularly frightening.

After Land Of The Dead, a great movie that felt buried beneath a huge budget and massive studio interference, it's wonderful to see Romero returning to his indie roots. Diary is entirely his own movie, and he draws the tone perfectly. The campy scares and the gross-out gore explosions are all present, and will delight diehard fans to no end. Romeroâ??s genius lies in the sudden switch from funny to disturbing at the drop of a hat. All the best moments of Diary come when the gory thrill ride ends and everything suddenly becomes all too real. These are truly the scenes that will stick with you after the gory brain-splatter have lost their novelty.

Diary isn't quite a perfect movie though. Occasionally the hand-held camera device becomes too distracting and begins to get in the way of the actual story. The movie takes too much time rationalizing why the characters decide to film the events, rather than trusting the audience to go along with the idea. At times it feels like the movie is apologizing for its own concept, which it definitely does not need to do. We don't need to know the details of why the movie is edited, or why music has been added. The explanations slow down the pace, and only highlight problems instead of fixing them. Stick it out though, because the movie's last sequence, more notably its last line of dialog, are worth the wait. This is most likely not the end of the Dead saga, but if it were, it could not have come to a more perfect conclusion than the jarring, horrific last shot Romero gives us. Diary is a flawed, experimental film from Romero; however a flawed Romero is far more challenging and interesting than 99% of the competition out there.