Diary of the Dead

It's a certifiable tragedy that George A. Romero, creator of the modern zombie genre, can't get a decent budget greenlit in Hollywood. While Michael Bay is given two hundred million dollars to shoot digital robots fighting, then edits the action so aggressively that you can't even tell what's happening, one of the finest horror directors of all time is forced to scrounge for nickels in order to fund his vital, provocative tales of the living dead. More than any other director, George Romero is the man who made horror films relevant. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, and his new film, Diary of the Dead are remarkable for their social insight and thunderous gut-level power. Yet, if there is one problem with his films, especially his last two, it's a claustraphobic lack of scope. For this, Romero is much less to blame than the nearsighted bean counters who won't give him the proper finacial backing. His films always hint at a vastly ambitious vision that is constrained by a paltry budget.

Romero's new film ignores the timeline of his earlier zombie films, which posit a chronology of apocalypse in which zombies slowly, from movie to movie, gain control of the earth's surface. Diary of the Dead reboots, with the first corpses rising from the dead in the present day, recorded by the vast array of digital technology of the present day. All of Romero's zombie films have used the living dead as a metaphor to critique contemporary society. For Diary, Romero's target is the age of viral media and the American compulsion to record our every action. In the film, a group of University of Pittsburgh film students find themselves smack in the middle of a zombie rising that threatens to destroy civilization as they know it. While they trek across Pennsylvania in search of safe haven, they also record everything they experience, for upload onto the internet. Like this year's hit Cloverfield, all of the action is shown from the perspective of the protagonist's camera.

As Dawn of the Dead is a commentary on the pathologies of consumer society, and 2004's underrated Land of the Dead deals with issues of political fearmongering and the exploitation of the global south, Diary of the Dead has it's satirical sights set squarely on the Youtube digital media world we inhabit. The film student heroes are far more interested in recording the horrors of zombie armageddon than helping their fellow men, or even each other, survive. Some have criticized the film for its heavy handed approach to the subject matter, with the action periodically interrupted by ponderous voice overs from one of the film students commenting on the anethestizing nature of media and the sick need to witness suffering. Taken in the context of the film, these segments make sense. After all, the whole idea is that the audience is watching a film made by the characters, and one of Romero's many targets of critique is the pretensious narcissism of self-styled artistes like the subjects. Of course they would feel compelled to beat the audience over the head with their shimmering insights into human nature. It's not as though Romero doesn't have a track record of subtle but powerful satire. Almost all of the subversiveness of Dawn of the Dead, for example, comes from shot selection and the ironic juxtaposition of walking corpses shambling through a shopping mall. There's not a leaden speech to be found.

The first-person point of view camera offers another advantage: Diary of the Dead is much scarier than any Romero zombie film since Night. There's a sense of dread and identification with the perspective of the camera operator that makes every blood-thirsty ghoul seem that much more terrifying. For this same reason, Romero's trademark dry humor has a stronger impact as well, and Diary is also his funniest film in years. Because the camera operators are film students wielding expensive equiptment, there's a fluidity and grace to the shots that other movies using a similar approach, like the abovementioned Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project, lack. This film is a lot less likely to make someone watching it feel seasick.

As enjoyable as Diary of the Dead is to watch, and as incisive as Romero's insight remains, there are still moments during the film where an audience member can't help but wonder what the man might have done with more money and time. The special effects are mostly convincing, but the canvas Romero paints on is frustratingly small. Won't someone cut this man a check already?

Score: 8.3