Friday, February 15, 2008

Movie review: Diary of the Dead

By Alex Bentley

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

Jason Creed and a small crew of college filmmakers are in the Pennsylvania woods making a no-budget horror film when they hear the terrifying news that the dead have started returning to life. Led by Jason's girlfriend, Debra, the frightened young filmmakers set off in a friend's old Winnebago to try to get back to the only safety and security they know: their homes. But, there is no escape from the crisis, nor any real home for them anymore. Everything they depend upon is fractured as the plague of the living dead begins to spread. Jason documents the true-life horrors in a tense, first-person style that heightens the reality of each encounter. Even as his friends die, even as they are attacked by ravenous walking corpses at every stop along the way, Jason keeps filming, an obsessive, unflinching eye in the midst of chaos. The government first denies, then promises to quell the crisis, but can't. Technology fails. Communication with the rest of the world becomes impossible. Jason and what remains of his crew end up on their own, a handful of lucky survivors, reliant on no one but themselves to stay alive. They take final refuge in a fortress of a mansion, but their sanctuary turns out to be a trap from which there is no escape. Throughout it all, the cameras keep rolling, recording every detail for future generations--if any survive.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

Diary of the Dead, the latest film from the original zombie master, George A. Romero, plays out almost exactly like you would expect an encounter with a 68-year-old man reliving his glory days: You plaster on a fake smile and pretend to find his ramblings entertaining, all the while silently hoping you don’t end up like him, retelling the same old story again and again.

The movie-making world has obviously long since passed Romero by. He may still be able to get his friends to do him a solid by chipping in voiceover work (among others, the voices of Wes Craven, Stephen King, and Quentin Tarantino can be heard as newscasters), but his ability to tap into (or better yet, influence) the zeitgeist has eroded just as much as his writing and directing skills.

If it’s possible to have a film feel both fresh and derivative, Diary of the Dead is it. More than anything, Dead feels like a dumbed-down combination of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, with, of course, zombies as the menace. The “action,” as it were, centers on a group of college students who are in the middle of filming the cheesiest-looking horror film ever made. When they start hearing reports about the dead coming back to life and attacking people (because that’s what every dead person would do the second they’re revived), the students, accompanied by their faculty sponsor, pile into their RV and head for … Scranton, Pennsylvania. Now, personally, I know of only one reason to go to Scranton, PA, and it ain’t to run away from zombies.

Lips are no longer essential in zombie-dom.

Dude, put ... the camera ... down!

Anyhoo, naturally, the director of that cheesy student flick, Jason (but, really, does it matter?), decides that since they’re already filming, everything else on their journey must be documented so they can "tell what really happened.” This declaration leads to increasingly laughable situations in which Jason must justify his continued filming. Romero (who also wrote the script) must think that he’s avoiding questions about his methodology by having several other characters question Jason’s decision to film everything that happens, when it really serves to do is constantly highlight the inanity of all.

The absurdity of his quest reaches its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective) when Jason inexplicably films a friend getting attacked when he’s the only one who can help her. There’s also the bonus that said friend has her breasts exposed during the attack, a moment which some might regard as clever since it harkens back to a moment earlier in the film, but actually comes off as exploitative and patently ridiculous. Some, including the director himself, might say that this is a critique on society's recent obsession to record anything and everything. That would be great if the bad dialog spouting out of his characters mouths didn't constantly detract from that message.

In addition to that "critique," Romero tries to make Dead “of the moment” by referencing MySpace, YouTube, and the Interwebs in general, but the script, action, and direction are so poor overall that any point he has to make about these things is lost. It’s also a tad preposterous that every other form of communication (phone, TV, radio, etc.) loses its usefulness over the course of the film, yet the internet retains its ability to disseminate information throughout. It may be folly to go into a movie like Diary of the Dead expecting realism, but I would also hope Romero wouldn’t actively insult our intelligence.

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