"The problem isn't that people are waking up dead, it's that the dead are waking up..."
Ok. I know I’ve been doing these as "review of the day" and I plan on going to “review of the week” once I do all the really famous/big movie franchises/ Romero's and then once I run out of movies maybe once a month or something—point being I know I already did a review this morning but I also skipped a few days this week, plus this is one of my all time favorites in the Romero Zombie series.
So here we are: 2007, almost 40 years since the original Night of the Living Dead. Romero has pumped out five zombie movies (if you count the Night remake) as well as a few other films, such as the original Crazies (aka Code Name Trixie). Diary of the Dead is a fantasic film all around.
George Romero loves his movies and his fan base so he wanted to do something for this new increasing second generation of Romero fans like me that thanks to their parents has been scarred and/or inspired in one way or another because of Night, Dawn, and Day. So Romero gave us as his thanks for support, the love letter to the generation 2 Romero fans, Diary of the Dead.
This film is shot in the style of found footage. For all you non-movie buffs out there, found footage is a type of filming where it is implied that it all really happened and someone was there to record it and find it. Some famous examples of this are The Blaire Witch Project and Cloverfield. This genre was started with the very controversial movie Cannibal Holocaust (http://thecinemasnob.com/2011/04/12/cannibal-holocaust.aspx). It is filmed via first person perspective with hand-held cameras. Many people do not really like or appreciate this genre but if done well it can be quite good such as is the case of Diary. In addition, Diary was never trying to further scare you by implying that the events really happened or anything like that. Diary was done in this style because Romero wanted to do something new and different and once again, make something that was a tribute and a nod to his original trilogy but at the same time appealing to the new generation. In my opinion it worked. This truly is a love letter to people like me. Some of the original fans did not think it was very good nor had that old Romero feel but as i said that was not the point.
This truly is at the very least the most scary and frightening of all of his six zombie movies (again, seven counting Night remake). Night was terrifying but won't scare many 20 + year olds these days, Dawn was campy and full of action, Day was a gore fest and as such is certainly the most gory, gross and bloody of all his films. However, Diary does indeed deserve a place in the genre of horror. With the found-footage camera angles and lighting it has a very surreal, claustrophobic feel to it. It is dark physically and metaphorically, morbid, and leaves one feeling angry/ashamed of humanity and asks some very existential questions.
This film is a reboot to the classic series, a retelling in the modern era and Diary goes back to the Night of the Living Dead, Day 1/Patient Zero feel. It is the beginning of the outbreak, there are no answers, no one knows exactly what is going on or what to do and of course, this is a universe where the original Romero movie never happened. Which means the Return of the Living Dead movies never happened, Resident Evil never happened, etc. Point? No one has seen a zombie before.
This time the cast are college students who happen to be film majors and their old film professor who in my opinion is one of the best characters. The main group of characters we follow are: Jason, the camera man for most of the movie and conflicted persona, Debra, Jason's girlfriend, Tony, Tracey, Elliot, Gordo, Mary, and Andrew Maxwell, the professor.
The movie opens with all of them shooting Jason's Mummy horror movie, which he cuts to explain to Ridley (the mummy), that he is moving too fast—dead things don't move fast. Dead things are slow, otherwise you'd snap your ankles off (foreshadowing? of course it is) Which is right from the mouth of Romero and that line makes all us true Romero zombie fans basically jizz our pants when he says that. During their break, they hear strange reports on the radio of what is going on and like all college students, naturally decide to get the heck out of dodge and return to the safety of their homes and families. They go to the University of Pittsburgh (oh I'm sorry...I should have mentioned this in my first review: all of Romero's movies take place in Pennsylvania, his home state but only the original 3 and the Night remake were shot in PN, his reboots are shot in Canada).
Anyway, they take Mary's RV and all head off to drop people off along the way to their homes except for a few who don't live in PN and are just along for the ride since the world is ending and there is safety in numbers. Tony lives in NY and Tracey lives in Texas. She has her own little camera too and so some of the movie comes from her perspective.
Things start to get real and intense as they drive down the road and run over a few zombies. At this point not all of them are convinced they are dead people and emotions go crazy as they freak out about whether or not they killed some people.
They then end up needing to go to a nearby hospital when a member their group is injured. I am not saying who it is or how they are hurt—watch the movie for that. No spoilers here. Debra finds another camera in the hospital so we get another viewpoint. We get all these multiple cameras edited together because, like I said, they are film majors and eventually Jason ends up getting access to a computer and begins to edit the footage and post it online to help others survive. A moral dilemma rises out of this between Jason and Debra. She thinks he is being crazy for sticking with his camera throughout this ordeal. One of the criticisms of found-footage movies: it is not realistic to keep a heavy camera with you and filming while a witch or a monster is chasing you, however Jason fixes this problem by explaining why he is doing this. He is saving lives by giving everyone access to the truth so that maybe others will learn to survive by watching how they have survived.
They make several more stops along the way and end up at Ridley's mansion that he boasts is like a fortes complete with panic room. It invariably ends with the remaining members of the group securing themselves into the panic room and then cuts to a clip Debra found of once again, rednecks having fun shooting up zombies and she asks the audience if we are worth saving.
I feel it is a very powerful and deep movie as well as disturbing. I do not think there is as much as an underlying theme in this one as with the previous ones. This time the theme is in your face: Humanity: worth saving/surviving? There are a few minor undertones however: 1) it is suggested thru out the film that the media cannot be trusted and that the huge media corps are lying to the public about what is truly going on as if covering up zombies will save people. We all know it will get more people killed. This is one of the reasons why Jason is so adamant and passionate about recording everything. He wants to get the unbiased objective truth to the masses to help them. This ties in with mini theme 2: technology, a lot of debate goes on about the evils and goods of the internet and other techs. In Diary, when the shit hits the fan and everyone runs, all that is left is the internet, bloggers, and hackers keeping the information flow going.
I give Diary of the Dead 4.75 (4 3/4) stars out of 5, and the only reason it isn't 5 is because Dawn is almost always seen as Romero's finest Zombie film which I agree. I gave Dawn 5 out of 5 and if it is the best then none of his other films can be better than or equal to Dawn. However, I will say this: Diary of the Dead is my favorite out of the 7 Romero zombie movies and it is certainly the most terrifying out of all of them.
Fun facts: This movie is so a love letter to horror and zombie fans: all the news reports on radio/TV that are in Diary are voiced by well-known people in the horror/zombie genre. This includes Wes Craven, Stephen King, Simon Pegg, Quentin Taratino, and Guillermo del Toro. In addition, at one point, one of the TV/radio broadcasts is actually a cameo of one of the TV broadcasts from the original Night of the Living Dead. I challenge you to pick out all of these. Other cameo's: Romero makes a cameo as a police chief in the film; Nicotero plays a zombie surgeon and does the make-up and effects. Boyd Banks plays the only white guy with a group of black survivalists run by an ex national guard member is seen in Land of the Dead as the Butcher Zombie. He is also a Zombie in Dawn of the Dead 2004 remake but that film has no continuity with Romero's universes. In addition, another National Guard member who appears in Diary reprises that character in Survival of the Dead (which will be my next review) and is seen for a few seconds as a soldier in Land of the Dead as well. Also it is possible that Romero was partially inspired by the movie The Zombie Diaries which came a year or two before Diary of the Dead. It is of course found-footage format and in my opinion on of the greatest zombie movies of all time and I have seen many zombie movies. However, it is really, really disturbing. Don’t worry, I’ll be doing a review of that one as well eventually.
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