Diary of the Dead
Directed by George A. Romero
As a cinematic pioneer, George A. Romero remains uniquely selective. For nearly 40 years, the father of the modern zombie movie contributed a humble quartet of undead squalor to the newly revived genre, applying anthropological focus to the collapse of civilization. In his latest entry, Diary of the Dead, the aging director returns to his starting point and sets the now-legendary story of a zombie outbreak in the present. The times have changed, but his unflinching portrait of humanity’s innately self-destructive tendencies hasn’t frayed a bit.
For his fifth outing, Romero chose to ditch the original timetable: The first four zombie films, beginning with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead and culminating with Land of the Dead in 2005, adhered to a chronological progression. The world gradually adapted to its debilitating plague, and so did the infected. In Diary, Romero pits the zombie epidemic against the digital quirks of the new millennium (the survivors download a news report of the outbreak off the web), which completely shatters the real-time logic of the earlier entries. In doing so, however, he makes a valiant attempt to resurrect their original impact.
The ending of Land essentially closed the book on the original mythology. The zombies grew intelligent enough to look out for themselves, while fledgling human tribes figured out their own methods of endurance. With its action-based tropes, Land bridged the gap between the disquieting zombie era of Night and the run-and-gun aesthetic of the mainstream Resident Evil franchise. By hitting the restart button on his own narrative—a Diary sequel is supposedly in the works—Romero has situated his artistry in the context of present-day zombie lore. With a lumbering shaky-cam design, the movie unfolds through the staged footage of the camera helmed by its aspiring filmmaker protagonists. At 68, Romero might be the oldest person to take a stab at this sub–Blair Witch aesthetic, but he’s pretty damn good at maintaining the frights alongside the illusion of nonfiction. It’s his decision to focus on characters less than half his age that drags down the intended outcome.
Beginning with a group of film students (all unknown actors) attempting to shoot their own monster movie, Diary quickly dives into familiar turf: Media reports about the dead coming to life convince the college kids to flee their campus and head to a homie’s pad. Various gory encounters hold them up along the way, including a well-staged claustrophobic attack on a barn, where a hilariously combative Amish man saves the day. The walking corpses look great and the killings offer a plenty of slapstick distractions, but Romero’s trademark intentions frequently slip and occasionally fall. He slyly notes the overwrought tendency to analogize in a horror film (the students intend to inject their movie with “an underlying thread of social commentary”), but the youth-centric humor generated by letting the twentysomething actors mouth off has nothing on the shining moments of Shaun of the Dead.
In fact, it borrows from them. Edgar Wright’s evaluation of civilized indolence as a zombie disease almost as bad anything else looks downright Pavlovian compared to Romero’s frat-boy and film-geek stereotypes. Providing superficial analysis of lackadaisical Gen-X despair, Romero’s efforts recall Tom Wolfe’s failed crack at nailing the cadences of university life in his 2004 novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. Still, at least Romero tactfully counteracts the juvenilia: A hardened academic type accompanies the survivors by happenstance, discussing war trauma in discombobulated Yoda-like monologues that recurrently leave the youngsters speechless. Also, the old dude kicks major zombie ass with a crossbow.
Anyway, the performances aren’t the real stars of the show. Considering its distinct pairing of documentary formalism with monster-movie conventions, Diary begs instant comparison to the DIY-style of Cloverfield, where home video captures a large-scale supernatural catastrophe to lesser effect. It’s remarkable how much better Romero, shooting in Toronto with a miniscule budget, achieves the intended result. He caps off a few positively scary scenes with the dreadful climax, a riotous assault on the brainlessness of a house party. The conclusion affirms Romero’s fixation on slaughterhouse finales.
Despite his apparent secularism, Romero’s work has developed a spiritual streak. With the exception of Night, his endings exclusively punish sinners in graphic reckonings: Militants are devoured in Dawn, scientists trying to play God get axed in Day, bourgeois snobs become the main snack in Land, and morally decrepit documentarians lose out in Diary. All three of his “classics” have been remade with varying changes to their initial moral values, but the contemporary beat of Diary means we’ve got at least 20 years before somebody decides to do it over. At that point, Romero’s riffs on the pratfalls of YouTube will either seem ahead of their time or far too late.
Directed by George A. Romero
As a cinematic pioneer, George A. Romero remains uniquely selective. For nearly 40 years, the father of the modern zombie movie contributed a humble quartet of undead squalor to the newly revived genre, applying anthropological focus to the collapse of civilization. In his latest entry, Diary of the Dead, the aging director returns to his starting point and sets the now-legendary story of a zombie outbreak in the present. The times have changed, but his unflinching portrait of humanity’s innately self-destructive tendencies hasn’t frayed a bit.
For his fifth outing, Romero chose to ditch the original timetable: The first four zombie films, beginning with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead and culminating with Land of the Dead in 2005, adhered to a chronological progression. The world gradually adapted to its debilitating plague, and so did the infected. In Diary, Romero pits the zombie epidemic against the digital quirks of the new millennium (the survivors download a news report of the outbreak off the web), which completely shatters the real-time logic of the earlier entries. In doing so, however, he makes a valiant attempt to resurrect their original impact.
The ending of Land essentially closed the book on the original mythology. The zombies grew intelligent enough to look out for themselves, while fledgling human tribes figured out their own methods of endurance. With its action-based tropes, Land bridged the gap between the disquieting zombie era of Night and the run-and-gun aesthetic of the mainstream Resident Evil franchise. By hitting the restart button on his own narrative—a Diary sequel is supposedly in the works—Romero has situated his artistry in the context of present-day zombie lore. With a lumbering shaky-cam design, the movie unfolds through the staged footage of the camera helmed by its aspiring filmmaker protagonists. At 68, Romero might be the oldest person to take a stab at this sub–Blair Witch aesthetic, but he’s pretty damn good at maintaining the frights alongside the illusion of nonfiction. It’s his decision to focus on characters less than half his age that drags down the intended outcome.
Beginning with a group of film students (all unknown actors) attempting to shoot their own monster movie, Diary quickly dives into familiar turf: Media reports about the dead coming to life convince the college kids to flee their campus and head to a homie’s pad. Various gory encounters hold them up along the way, including a well-staged claustrophobic attack on a barn, where a hilariously combative Amish man saves the day. The walking corpses look great and the killings offer a plenty of slapstick distractions, but Romero’s trademark intentions frequently slip and occasionally fall. He slyly notes the overwrought tendency to analogize in a horror film (the students intend to inject their movie with “an underlying thread of social commentary”), but the youth-centric humor generated by letting the twentysomething actors mouth off has nothing on the shining moments of Shaun of the Dead.
In fact, it borrows from them. Edgar Wright’s evaluation of civilized indolence as a zombie disease almost as bad anything else looks downright Pavlovian compared to Romero’s frat-boy and film-geek stereotypes. Providing superficial analysis of lackadaisical Gen-X despair, Romero’s efforts recall Tom Wolfe’s failed crack at nailing the cadences of university life in his 2004 novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. Still, at least Romero tactfully counteracts the juvenilia: A hardened academic type accompanies the survivors by happenstance, discussing war trauma in discombobulated Yoda-like monologues that recurrently leave the youngsters speechless. Also, the old dude kicks major zombie ass with a crossbow.
Anyway, the performances aren’t the real stars of the show. Considering its distinct pairing of documentary formalism with monster-movie conventions, Diary begs instant comparison to the DIY-style of Cloverfield, where home video captures a large-scale supernatural catastrophe to lesser effect. It’s remarkable how much better Romero, shooting in Toronto with a miniscule budget, achieves the intended result. He caps off a few positively scary scenes with the dreadful climax, a riotous assault on the brainlessness of a house party. The conclusion affirms Romero’s fixation on slaughterhouse finales.
Despite his apparent secularism, Romero’s work has developed a spiritual streak. With the exception of Night, his endings exclusively punish sinners in graphic reckonings: Militants are devoured in Dawn, scientists trying to play God get axed in Day, bourgeois snobs become the main snack in Land, and morally decrepit documentarians lose out in Diary. All three of his “classics” have been remade with varying changes to their initial moral values, but the contemporary beat of Diary means we’ve got at least 20 years before somebody decides to do it over. At that point, Romero’s riffs on the pratfalls of YouTube will either seem ahead of their time or far too late.
