Diary of the Dead review

Diary of the Dead
Directed by: George A. Romero
Rated: R (contains strong violence/gore and pervasive language)
Starring: Lots of no-names
Score: ***


George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead is the newest installment in Romero's highly influential Dead series. This film is the first film that is actually a sequel- picking up where the original Night of the Living Dead

This installment takes two very different approaches to filmmaking that Romero's hasn't done before- the handheld/first-person camera perspective, and completely beating you over the head with his message. Usually Romero opts for a more subtle approach to his social commentary, but here it's just so obvious and blatant.

The film follows a bunch of Pittsburgh college students as they are making a horror film in the woods with their professor. Suddenly, a news broadcast appears telling them that the dead have begun to rise. At first our heroes don't believe it, but soon they realize, through unfortunate encounters of their own, that the dead are trying to kill and eat them.

And one of the students, the director of the film, decides to stay in "Jackass Overly-Controlling Film Director" mode for the entirety of the film in order to make what they call "a diary of the events", which he promptly uploads part of to Youtube. It gets 74,000 hits in 8 minutes, since the news media is framing it all wrong and the only real footage is done by amateurs. He has to get the truth out there, in order to maybe "save somebodies' lives." See, the amazingly NOT subtle thing is, in at least 3 scenes, we find out he doesn't give jack sh!t about anybody.

The entire film is so pushy with it's message of the evils of the electronic age and the over-reliance on the media as a source of fact. It's off-putting. And it's inexcusable.

Romero always has social commentary in his films, whether it be racism, consumerism, the class struggle, whatever. But he's able to frame it so well without shoving down are throats like we're 5 dollar whores. Not here.

Having said that, I will certainly say that the film's message is a good one. The characters(with the exception of Mr. Gun-Ho Documentary Maker) are all very well fleshed out. the pain and guilt of losing family members, dealing with an impossible situation, and having to kill somebody(even if they're already dead) are all realized to their full potential.

The film has some real poignant moments between characters and the dialog, for the most part, is very good(albeit pretty theatrical at times).

The "action" of the film is few and far between. Compared to the rest of his films, Day of the Dead especially, this movie is severely lacking in the gore department. We have a few good scares and a couple awesome kill scenes, but the film makes you feel bad for wanting to see the violence. Any time there is any amount of blood or gore, the characters are there to give you a speech about how, when you're sitting behind a camera or watching through a screen, you become immune to death and destruction. It all becomes a spectator sport.

It made me feel bad about myself, because if I was in their situation, I'm afraid that I would become a senseless killing machine willing to do anything to stay alive, with no regard or thought put to how or why my friends and family became the way they are. I count this as a very strong point of the film. It was able to achieve it's desired effect, but not without pissing me off numerous times.

At times the film is powerful and relevant, but a lot of the time the characters just stand and yell personal attacks at the director of the "documentary". Romero could have made this film amazing. It could have been a socially relevant film with very important undertones. Instead it sometimes comes off like a charismatic Pentecostal preacher yelling at the top of his lungs on Sunday morning.

Cloverfield pulled it off much better.