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“A horror film’s job is to scare you, is to get your pulse going, is to make you scream and yell. It’s to make you be afraid. That’s its main purpose, and creeping you out. And that can be an enjoyable experience.” --- John Carpenter ::::::::::::: MY CRITERIA FOR DISCUSSION ENCOMPASSES THE HORROR GENRE AND BEYOND, SO I USE THE TERM "NIGHTMARE MOVIES". SPOILERS CAN OCCUR WITH OR WITHOUT WARNING. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

September 19th 2008 02:45
Diary of the Dead movie poster
Please excuse the lengthy purge of this post, but it’s been a while coming. Diary of the Dead (2007) was to get a theatrical release down under back in February, but the most attention it’d received was a screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, with the bucket of goodies bonus of having writer/director George A. Romero himself introducing the screening and holding a Q&A afterwards. Damn, I’d have liked to have been there for that, as I have a few questions for the man myself. I tried getting my list to him belatedly via his publicity team, but to no avail.

Although zombies had been around in cinema for quite some time it was Romero’s low-budget black and white 16mm independent film Night of the Liviing Dead (1968) that injected a whole new life (or death, to be a smartass) into the concept of the undead. The movie did phenomenal business on the then very popular midnight movie circuit (think grindhouse cinemas and drive-ins). He followed Night with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and took modern horror to a new level of mordent tone and graphic violence.
Diary of the Dead Joshua Close
Joshua Close as Jason Creed
Dawn of the Dead was one of the first movies to bask in the self-styled glory of waving a no-MPAA rating banner above its head, and the horror fans went crazy for it. In New Zealand the movie was slapped with an R18 – contains frequent episodes of graphic violence. I wasn’t even in my teens when I saw the famous “When there’s no more room in Hell the dead will walk the Earth” poster and I was in awe that a horror movie could get that kind of restrictive rating.

In 1985 Romero delivered Day of the Dead, in my opinion still the best of the series, but it bombed at the American box office and thus never received wide international distribution. I had to wait several years before I could see it, and even then it was a dodgy bootlegged NTSC-to-PAL transfer on VHS (which only added to the movie's dark power). The downbeat tone, memorably melancholic electronic score, and the extraordinary special effects make-up designed by Tom Savini (which to this day is unequaled) made Day of the Dead a zombie movie to be reckoned with.
Diary of the Dead Shawn Roberts, Michelle Morgan and Joe Dinicol
Shawn Roberts as Tony, Michelle Morgan as Debra and Joe Dinicol as Eliot
But Romero wasn’t finished. Day of the Dead had been the result of a budgetary compromise. But fans waited twenty years before Land of the Dead (2005) was released. The response was disappointing. The movie suffered from a wide-release theatrical R-rated cut, while the more powerful unrated version was left for the DVD release. As the most conventional of the series Land of the Dead left fans still wanting more. Which brings us to Diary of the Dead.
Diary of the Dead Amy Lalonde
Amy Lalonde as Tracy
Capitalising on the whole explosion of the media savvy Y-Generation Romero takes us back in time to a present which seems to sit chronologically somewhere in between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Basically authorities and civilians are encountering the rise of the undead for the first time which suggests the beginnings of the wide scale chaos of Dawn of the Dead, but certainly not the desolation of Day of the Dead.
Dairy of the Dead Michelle Morgan
Debra goes all McGyver
Jason Creed (Joshua Close), a Pittsburgh (where it all began) film student, is making a shlocky horror movie (featuring the mummy, a cinema precursor to the zombie) in the nearby woods, with several other colleagues and friends, including his soak of a tutor (echoes of Day of the Dead's McDermott character). There are news reports on the radio of the dead coming back to life. The mummy actor Ridley (Phillip Riccio) decides to head to his folks mansion in nearby Philly with his girlfriend. Jason wraps the shoot and heads to the university dorm to find his girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan), but decides to remain shooting with his camcorder because he feels documenting the dreadful events unfolding before them is imperative.
Diary of the Dead Chris Violette and Joe Dinicol
Eliot gets excited while Gordo (Chris Violette) lies wounded with a zombie bite
Debra is very concerned, not just with Jason’s insistence on videoing everything, but more importantly she can’t get hold of her parents. She joins the others and they head off in the crew’s Winnebago. But tragedy strikes and soon enough they find themselves in an abandoned hospital seeking emergency medical assistance, which comes in the form of several ravenous zombies. Further disaster strikes, and the ragtag group are back on the road.

Diary of the Dead Trish Adams
Tracy's mother (Trish Adams) gets a taste for her husband's arm
After encountering a deaf Amish man, a rogue Afro-American team from the National Guard, and discovering the awful truth at Debra’s folks’ place, Jason, Debra and the rest eventually arrive at Ridley’s mansion retreat. It is here where Jason’s diary of the dead (which the audience have been informed has been titled The Death of Death) will take a significant turn for the worse.

Diary of the Dead finishes with survivors holed up in the mansion’s panic room and Debra viewing footage uploaded onto the Net showing hillbillies using zombies as target practice, in particular using a shotgun to blow apart a woman suspended from a high tree branch by her hair. Debra poses the question “Is the human race worth saving?”
Diary of the Dead Joshua Close and Philip Riccio
A zombified Ridley (Philip Riccio) attacks Jason who insists on keeping the camera recording
Romero is trying to pose many angles and questions about the manipulation of media via television and the Internet, the frustrating reliance we have on technology, the prevalent nature of blogging and hacking, the battle between truth and noise. At one point Jason spouts to the others, “I don’t wanna make this kinda movie either, but I can’t change the script”. In one light Diary is less a heavy-handed satire (more so than Dawn ever was), but a movie balancing precariously on the edge of parody.

It doesn’t help that the acting is uniformly mediocre. I’ll admit that none of the Dead movies have had brilliant performances, but Diary does sport some of the worst in the series. The forced acting only hampers Romero’s often stilted dialogue, which frequently states the blindingly obvious.
Diary of the Dead poster image
Image used for movie poster
Diary of the Dead is by no means a crashing disappointment, certainly not like Land of the Dead was (although truth be told, the much more violent unrated version of Land is definitely worth it), but it doesn’t shed any new light on anything inparticular. Romero films and intercuts the entire movie from the perspective of the two camcorders, a mobile phone camera, closed circuit tv, webcams, and news reports on the television. Perhaps if Diary of the Dead had come out ten years ago, this technique would’ve seemed revolutionary, but instead it comes across as trying a little too hard to be “edgy” and “realistic” (if the acting had been better I might have been more convinced).

As for the special effects, there is too much reliance on CGI. Sigh. Even though Tom Savini protégé Greg Nicotero, now the biggest name in special make-up effects, is credited as Special Makeup Effects Producer, the Special Makeup Effects credit is given to Gaslight Studio, which smacks of digital territory to me.

There’s a curious Very Special Thanks credit which mentions Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, Simon Pegg, Tom Savini and Quentin Tarantino. Hmmm, is that nod to those who Romero truly admires? I’d love to know the nuts and bolts of that list.

As an epilogue to this overlong post, I want to state that I’m not yet sated with Romero’s zombie series. I still feel he has the final word still to say. I will wait patiently for what I hope will be Twilight of the Dead (or perhaps Dusk of the Dead), because I know Romero, despite the criticism he’s received for Diary, will come back once more to tear the warm flesh asunder with the dirtied hands of the living dead.

All hail the zombie!

Here's the trailer:


Diary of the Dead DVD, packed full of extras, is being distributed in Australia by Madman Entertainment

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews
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8 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Cibbuano

September 19th 2008 03:37


Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
sigh... I've heard disappointing things about this, which is too bad. Has Romero lost the magic touch?

I'd still watch it though.

Unrated Land of the Dead? Is there much more added in?


Comment by Bryn

September 19th 2008 05:00


Horrorphile
Cibby, dude, compared to the remake of Day of the Dead, or most other current attempts at the zombie sub-genre, Diary of the Dead is excellent, but it's really the acting and the lack of impressive gore that lets the movie down ... Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead is better, but I haven't made up my mind over Land or Diary yet.
In the unrated Land of the Dead there is more lingering on the gore. In the R-rated cut Romero was forced to darken the colour of the blood and had to add CGI-ed objects in the foreground to block images considered too intense.
You should definitely watch Diary, I'd be curious to know your thoughts. Not sure when the release date is though, I was given a screener copy through a friend who works for Empire mag.

Comment by KylieW

September 19th 2008 06:14


Celebrity Obsession
I'd give it a watch (mind you, given some of the truly crap movies I've watched and enjoyed that's probably not much of a compliment).

Unrated Land of the Dead eh? That would be interesting. I gave the R rated one a watch and wasn't terribly taken with it - it was okay, but didn't grab me.

Great review

Comment by Bryn

September 19th 2008 06:58


Horrorphile
Hi Kylie, cheers, yeah Land just didn't quite bite down to the bone ... The more graphic unrated version does have some merit, just for pushing the gore boundaries a little further, but there's no more marrow to the screenplay ... I rate Zack Synder's re-envisioning of Dawn as a better movie. But my fave as I said in my review is still Day of the Dead by a long shot. There's a mood, tone and atmospheric quality that just isn't there in any of the other movies. Night of the Living Dead is great, but that's it's own kettle of putrid fish, and it's difficult to compare it to the latter colour, bigger budgeted films. Although for sheer late 60s chutzpah Night is untouchable.

Comment by Damo

September 20th 2008 01:43
So is it The Blair Witch Zombie?

or

Yawn of the Dead.

Not sure about the concept.

Comment by Bryn

September 22nd 2008 01:36


Horrorphile
Damo, hey, I like Blair Witch Project.

Comment by Cibbuano

September 22nd 2008 02:53


Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
blast you and your sneaky screeners! I'll definitely give it a look when it passes my desk.

Honestly, though, I think the most impressive movements in the zombie genre are in comic books. Have you read "The Walking Dead"? It's a fantastic, 8-9 book comic series that deals with a zombie apocalypse, but with a Romero-type focus on the social problems of the survivors. Greed, desperation, alienation. Great stuff.

And then, I also read the ludicrous additions to the genre: "Marvel Zombies" where the Marvel superheroes become zombies and curse the world with their superhuman hunger for human flesh, and "XXXombies" a fun tale of porn-movie survivors in a zombie holocaust.


Comment by Bryn

September 22nd 2008 05:01


Horrorphile
I can't compare zombies on the page with zombies on the screen ... I find zombies on the screen inherently scarier than within the pages of a graphic novel or comic strip, although it has to be said that the majority of zombie movies are generally pretty dreadful.
Speaking of porn and zombies I have a Joe D'Amato "classic" on VHS called Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, if you're at all interested ... heh heh heh

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