Review of Diary of the Dead (2007) by Chads. — 24 May 2008

"Diary of the Dead" just might be the most shocking zombie picture yet in this filmmaker's oeuvre. Blood has nothing to do with it, or exposed guts. This latest tale of the undead by the guy who made little kids wet their pants at bijou matinees all across America back in 1968 with "Night of the Living Dead", delivers a horror film that's more about filmmaking than zombies.

In particular, the decisions made in post-production are foregrounded. Debra(Michelle Morgan) finishes the film for Jason(Joshua Close). It's out of his hands. He doesn't get final cut. She does.

If you think the voice-overs and the lyrical flashbacks of their deceased friends are hokey, remember that Debra is a college student, not Thelma Schoonmaker. Jason would hate what Debra did to his masterpiece.

"Diary of the Dead", among other things, is shrewd about the subjects in a documentary film. It's not reality; it's movie reality, because the people in your non-fiction film are indeed acting; acting as if they're not aware of the cameras.

And finally, in the final scene, this filmmaker brilliantly fesses up to the inherent immorality of staging pretend murders in grisly fashion for fun, in a roundabout fashion. He knows he's not subtle when it comes to depicting violent acts.

He shows everything, albeit wittily. But Jason, the film's filmmaker within the film, makes the directorial choice to not point the camera at a transformed friend who's put down by friendly fire, during their stay at the hospital.

Jason is like the filmmaker's alter ego, so the filmmaker experiments with his normal manner of shooting a scene, because he's Jason Creed, student filmmaker, not the guy who made "Dawn of the Dead".

This film is so much more fun than Michael Haneke's "Funny Games", another film that tackled the complicity of filmmakers and audiences in pertaining to movie violence.