Film

Let it die

George Romero goes to the zombie well one too many times

Josh Bell

There was a time when George A. Romero’s zombie movies were shining examples of couching social commentary in visceral horror; his low-budget 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead still stands as one of the most unsettling films ever made, and the clever, scathing takedown of consumerism in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead further showed the allegorical potential of the walking dead. Even 1985’s uneven Day of the Dead had an interesting take on military culture and scientific research. When Romero returned to the undead after a long hiatus with 2005’s Land of the Dead, he brought the same anti-authoritarian critiques with him, but what once had seemed fresh and smart now only came off as repetitive.

At least Land found Romero tackling issues he knew something about, and had its moments of effective horror. The director’s latest foray into zombie territory, Diary of the Dead, is easily his worst, and unlike the mediocre familiarity of Land, it finds him trying to say something new and relevant and only coming off as out of touch. It also takes Romero back to his low-budget indie roots, which means some horribly awkward acting from a cast of unknowns, and much less lavish special effects. That might be forgivable if Romero’s writing or directing were up to his old standards, but it’s at least as awkward as the performances, and certainly can’t be excused for inexperience.

Rather than following the timeline established by the previous four Dead movies, Diary goes back to the start, documenting the beginning of the zombie infestation as if it were occurring today rather than in 1968, although sticking to the same basic rules (Romero’s zombies remain old-school, lumbering drones who can only be killed by a shot directly to the brain). And “documenting” is exactly the word for what happens here, as Romero takes the same approach as recent films Redacted and Cloverfield, structuring his film like a collection of found footage, made by a group of college students who were shooting a movie (about the undead, of course) when people starting rising from their graves.

Diary has more in common with the mannered Redacted than the visceral Cloverfield, though, and like Redacted director Brian De Palma, another veteran genre auteur, Romero seems to have more enthusiasm for the new technology he’s exploring than understanding of it. Obviously the characters’ morbid compulsion to constantly film the chaos and horror around them is a commentary on our media-saturated, emotionally detached age, but maybe Romero doesn’t think that his audience will understand that, since his characters spend the entire movie gabbing about What It All Means, at least as much time as they spend figuring out how not to become zombie food.

And Romero can’t quite commit to his conceit, either, allowing voice-of-reason character Debra (Michelle Morgan) to narrate that she’s edited their footage (shot conveniently with multiple cameras) and added music to it, so that when Romero needs to create suspense, he cranks up the score and cuts to a revealing angle, just like he’d do in a conventional movie. Like Redacted, Diary feels faker the more “real” it makes itself out to be. The stilted dialogue declares the subtext in bold, unwieldy pronouncements, and Romero proves that, blank slates as they may be, zombies do have a limit when it comes to serving as carriers for his increasingly heavy-handed messages.

Diary of the Dead

**

Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts

Directed by George A. Romero

Rated R

Opens Friday

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