Review of Diary of the Dead (2007) by Laurence C — 13 Jun 2009

Anyway you put it... Romero's latest is a misfire. A lost cause. A crappy movie.

I'll get straight to the point : if Diary of the Dead's (jaw-droppingly unsubtle) commentary on the public's perverse fascination with the portrayal of terror in the media (and the technology that allows us to witness it all) was at the service of a substantially better film, perhaps it wouldn't appear so tedious. But alas, the zombie mastermind's latest epidemic freak-out is rather lifeless, and it frequently pauses itself to babble & gift-wrap the preceeding scene with a 'shock' moral. This is an extremely tiresome tick that is done again and again and again, up to a point where you won't care what's happening to whom anymore. Of course, it doesn't help much that the invasion crescendo is nonexistent and extremely been-there-done-that, and also caked with ridiculously underdone character hysterics. You see, the gravity's just *not* there; no one gives a damn about their family chewing on each other or being forced to blow their boyfriend's brains out. But the cherry on top has to be the fuck-all flat performances each member of the cast deliver : I was also very surprised to be most annoyed by the 'final girl' role-- Michelle Morgan rarely lets a scene finish without smothering out all of its remaining spark with her dreadful screen presence and mechanical line delivery. But maybe it's just the character. Or not.

So, well, yeah, the narrative also sucks (the survivors drive from house to house; they encounter all kinds of characters, each and every one of them get a whopping three minutes of screentime before their throats are chewed, and OH, the film doesn't 'end', it fucking STOPS) and the gore is... kind of just 'there'. Even on a superficial level, Diary of the Dead is unable to deliver.

And as for the 'scary' factor... don't even get me started. An Inconvenient Truth was exponentially spookier.

A part of me still wants to hug Romero for pursuing with his renewing of a genre that decays by the year... but most of myself pretty much wants to slap him for putting together such a... *gasp!* BAD FILM.