So, despite all the terrible reviews (I feel like) I read, I pulled DIARY OF THE DEAD, the fifth "official" George Romero zombie flick, released perhaps a couple years ago. I'd had some trepidation about it, considering LAND OF THE DEAD (the fourth) was more than serviceable but showing some "strain" in Romero's attempt to navigate a "studio" zombie movie.
With DIARY OF THE DEAD, Romero is working more "independently" once more. The red flags for this movie, however, begin with Romero returning to the initial moments of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD territory, refitting his zombie mythos into our current society, with its hubris, its slavering consumerism, its shallowness.
Man, I wanted to like DIARY, and it's still better than most zombie ilk made in the wake of DAWN OF THE DEAD in 1979 (not the admittedly fun but excreable remake...which takes a premise and dumbs it down significantly--another strike for Romero in that he "embraced" the remake, which is like me "embracing" a Tarzan movie starring Zach Braff)...which is to say, DIARY OF THE DEAD is a monumentally pretentious movie that hamstrings Romero in a way I've never seen before.
I've loved most everything Romero has done (still haven't seen all of KNIGHTRIDERS), and I think he was and is still as good as ever. His movie BRUISER was a fantastic "idea" movie, probably the best of modern Romero. LAND OF THE DEAD suffered from a desire for Romero to create sympathy for the Walking Dead, accomplished in a method that fit Romero's more proletariat style...Romero may layered his stories with social commentary, but subtle he ain't. "Thinking" zombies was almost as bad as "running" zombies, but you couldn't argue Romero didn't know how to shoot the sh*t out of a good zombie slaughter scene, whether the eaters are eating or getting blown away.
DIARY OF THE DEAD strains credulity, sure, but worse it just heaps on the heavy-handedness with its characters. The idea is that a group of Pitt college kids are shooting a class-project horror movie and stumble into Romero's "new" Zombie Apocalypse. One kid, name of Creed, decides to document the events on camera, downloaded to his laptop and edited, for posterity and presumably to become "famous." This isn't a short-coming of the movie at all. I liked the set-up actually...the characters are really hard to stomach. Everyone is incredulous that Mr. Creed is filming death, moray decay and cannibalistic murder, but nobody tries to stop him. Romero never touches on the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, all these youthful bright lights want to be stars. Even if it's the movie about the end of the world.
Instead most of the flick is concerned with a bunch of pompous posturing by various characters, which does fit in with the modern mindset of "starring" in each and every one's own movie. The problem is that the Creed kid just simply has no strength, moral or otherwise, while the "center" of the movie is his girlfriend, a "college student" if she didn't look thirty years old. Her strength comes from constantly brow-beating her poor boyfriend for his sketchy ethics in the crisis, and as understandable as it is...well, the kid never has a good argument for his actions. Frankly his relationship with this girl doesn't seem remotely real...without any basis for emotion, we can't have the tense attraction as between Ben and Barbara in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, or the strained need of Stephen and Francine in DAWN OF THE DEAD, or the playful pull between John and Sarah in DAY OF THE DEAD. In the fourth film LAND, the failing of DIARY's central relationship is also clear, a kind of muted charm without heat. The problem with LAND and DIARY lies wholly within their inability to make us care about the characters. This wasn't the case at all in the first three movies, but Romero's natural subtlety hinders inherent suspense.
Anyway, there's little in DIARY that is purely Romero, which is no good, and yet I can't dismiss it. I can say that Romero's reliance on CGI splatter is really grating. He might as well put the film reels of all his great movies in the bathtub and piss all over them. CGI in a Romero zombie movie is akin to watching classic 1970s porn in which all the full-bodied bush has been removed for the sensibilities of a shaved-beaver modern mentality. If you get my meaning. The whole point of 1970s porn would be the hairy genitals, hairy chests, and hairy upper lips topped off with white-man afros. Without those details, you don't have 1970s porn. And without squibs and Tom Savini make-up effects, you haven't a Romero zombie movie. It stands as a testement to the fact that every movie ever made is an accomplishment of many, not just one talent.
I can't recomment DIARY OF THE DEAD to anybody but the completist. Yet I can't say it's worthless, because there's never been a worthless Romero movie ever made. So there's that.
By the way, the top image is one of Travis Pitts' fantastic "Zombie America" 1950s retro posters. Go here http://www.imagekind.com/MemberProfile.aspx?MID=c3993939-15b1-45c0-bf80-904fb28bf10e for more such and others of brilliant magnitude.
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