Review of Diary of the Dead (2007) by Ilhm — 01 Feb 2013

If George Romero had made this three or four years sooner, it may have still been relevant, but DIARY OF THE DEAD comes in way too late in the long line of "found footage" films that became popular in the 2000's. DIARY follows a group of college students as they document their first-hand account of the zombie apocalypse using a hand-held video camera. Unfortunately, Romero gets the format entirely wrong in every conceivable way. Instead of producing an ultra-realistic nightmare as we had seen in [REC] from the same year, he gives us a poorly-staged and utterly contrived zombie bore lead by unbelievable characters and lackluster special effects.

In the first of many offenses, Romero allows his characters to edit their footage, which entails adding slow-motion effects, scene transitions, and even narration. The editor has even chosen to emphasize the scares using blaring sound effects! Romero's characters are given painfully unnatural dialog, which makes them come off as being bad actors rather than genuine people. The zombies are killed in a variety of glamorized ways that simply would not happen in a real-world survivor setting. Worst of all, the cartoon gore is comprised almost entirely by computerized effects! How does this, in any way, reflect reality? Why choose this format only to then go back and fictionalize the events? The only answer seems to lie in the editor's commentary, itself. Debra repeatedly stresses how it was impossible to discern fact from fiction with 400,000 spins on the truth available for download online. Perhaps this, too, is some elaborate prank being played by the filmmakers, calling back to the Wellesian War of the Worlds radio drama that Romero references as well? Even in that remote possibility, DIARY OF THE DEAD never displays enough intelligence to credit it as being a satire.

DIARY OF THE DEAD shows an extreme disconnect between concept and execution. Romero may have entered this project with good intentions, but the result is truly horrifying.