• home
• games
• the lists
• rants & raves
• movies
• bands
• downloads

Diary of the Dead

"I thought Amish were friendly folk."
Starring: Michelle Morgan, Josh Close, Amy Lalonde, Tatiana Maslany, Shawn Roberts
Rating: 8.5/10
Directed By: George Romero
Runtime: 96 minutes

George Romero, father of the modern zombie film, has returned with another living dead movie and has done so in glorious low budget. After the major studio disaster that was 2005's Land of the Dead, Romero scraped together a more modest budget and produced a story that, though unrelated to his other zombie series, parallels Night of the Living Dead in terms of following a zombie outbreak for the first few days. The story is contemporary, allowing Romero to take advantage of modern technology, a central theme in Diary of the Dead. In fact, the whole story is delivered through the point of view of a camera, be it hand-held or tv style. The medium, this time, is the message.

The movie begins with a Channel 10 News bulletin regarding a man in Homestead who shot his family/self which begins the outbreak. We then flash to Jason Creed (Joshua Close), undergrad director filming his senior class project "The Death of Death," and his troop of "actors;" our protagonists of the film. You can tell straightaway Romero cast non-actors and a quick glance at IMDb shows a veritable who's-who of television's "rising stars" - all very pretty may I point out. Like the rotten Day X, Romero includes an intro scene to familiarize yourself with the limited talent. There is Mary Dexter (Tatiana Maslany), the freaky religious girl; Debra Moynihan (Michelle Morgan), the director's girlfriend on her way to Scranton, Pa to see her family for Spring Break; Tony Ravello (Shawn Roberts), make-up man; Tracy Thurman (Amy Lalonde) a hot blond from Texas; Eliot Stone (Joe Dinicol) nerd; Gordo Thorsen (Chris Violette), choad and their professor Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), resident drunk. They are in the midst of an argument about whether or not Tracy is going to trip and fall, then show her beautiful breasts in the film (for the record, Tracy feels things like that don't ever happen in real life, so no) when word of the outbreak reaches them so the film is left unfinished and the gang, accompanied by the Professor, decide to pile in the RV and head to their parents (as previously planned) and see what's happening along the way.

This Hope/Crosby road movie begins auspiciously enough when Mary runs over three zombies and has a religious crisis, attempting suicide to assuage her guilt. She is taken to a hospital where she dies, turns and is shot in the head in an excellent blow for irony. The hospital holds many adventures as a zombie's eyes are blown out by an EKG machine and, in the anti-Cloverfield moment of 2007, Jason Creed plugs in and recharges his camera. This is a nice, tense scene as Jason hears sounds and shots but because he's recharging his battery, as Debra so astutely admonishes, "You missed it. If it didn't happen on camera it didn't happen, right?" Now that the battery is recharged, it's time for more assorted hijinx as Gordo gets bit; we see a cool shot of a guy hang as the RV speeds beneath; we encounter a deaf, dynamite-throwing Amish dude (show stealer); Debra's staggering pronouncement "without gas, we're not gonna make it" and the cast's eventual encampment with a bunch of militant black dudes where even more hijinx ensue. Jason makes a pronouncement of his own: "$100,000 education and I can't find my way out of a fucking warehouse." Nor, apparently, figure out how to turn on a light.

All this leads up to the eventual arrival at Debra's house, first stop on the zombie world tour. Debra narrates the flick so you know she survives but you also know by using your brain that her family does not - we need to remove them so Debra can go on guilt free. Besides being a bad-ass drunk, Professor Maxwell is also an expert with the bow and arrow and any firearm you care to hand him. Now we cruise to our next destination, Ridley (Philip Riccio)'s pad. He's a pal who, when word of the outbreak hit, split to his parent's "compound" with Francine (Megan Park). Ridley, still dressed as the mummy from Jason's film, is completely cracked because his whole family is pretty dead and he is bit. He, of course, turns and immediately chases the hottest girl he can find just like a real mummy. That girl is Tracy and they flee just like Jason wanted in the beginning. Tracy even falls down and shows off her beautiful chest, proving that yes, this does happen in real life and if you work in tv you will probably get naked to make the jump to a feature (but if you wanna know where the .5 in the review comes in, look no further). Tracy, smarter than the average cast, flat-out steals the RV and is gone. Ridley-zombie goes on a kill-spree and you come to the realization that every major threat in the film to this point has been handled by the Professor. Debra makes some choices, people die and the movie ends with a woman hanging by the hair and being 12-gauged.

Now, the point of all this, to Romero is not a zombie good time (though the above sounds just that, doesn't it?) but a criticism of today's media culture and it is this message which does the greatest detriment to an otherwise fine film. Romero keeps the first bit of the film on a "news is always horseshit" level, pointing out "that's what started the panic; not knowing the truth" and this is a solid observation. With details sketchy and governmental as well as syndication censorship, how do you know what's really happening? Romero's subtext early in the film gives the viewer's mind something to mull over besides the non-acting and hotness of the cast and raises some thought-provoking questions but by the time we're half-way through the film Romero becomes more heavy-handed in his message - probably figuring (and rightly so) that people that discovered him through Land of the Dead are gonna need the help. Romero's obsession, much like Jason Creed's, is dissemination of information and man's voyeuristic nature. The "mainstream" quickly vanishes and the "news" is left in the hands of bloggers and home-documentarians...within days of the outbreak, providing us with supplemental footage like the Japanese Youtube download of a woman admonishing, "don't bury dead, first shoot in head." Jason's need to upload and inform, despite the chaos surrounding him and his supremely hot girlfriend (to which no information should be a deterrent) becomes what the film is about and, largely what Romero sees we've become about with our web-obsessed freedom of information and lack of interpersonal interaction in real life. Because of this, the second half of the film suffers as the impetus which drives the film has shifted from zombie road trip to where our information age is leading us and our empathy with the film is forced back a step; in effect pulling you out of the film.

The only other major flaw is the pretty and untalented cast. I believe, since this is a faux-documentary that the tv talent was instructed to make it "real." This stresses the similarity between Diary's cast and that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in that I want every one of them to die. Otherwise, the film has it's ups and downs with enough of what you want to make up for the Land of the Dead. The package contains a four minute doc. called the First Week which sucks by some fat guy; Roots, a 2 min. Romero introduction; Character Confessionals, 16 min. of the actors interviewing as "characters;" Familiar Voices, a 5 min. background voices exposè in which the voice talents of Simon Pegg, Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro are utilized and the Myspace Short films, 5 living dead flicks. The winner doesn't deserve it but all of them are solid. Best Buy also sold this in a pack with a bonus book, The Zen of Zombie by Scott Kenemore which is ok.