Diary Of The Dead (Madman)

Author: stereonerd [13-06-2009 15:11]

This one sat around for months because I just couldn’t quite bring myself to watching it. I’m a huge fan of George Romero’s original zombie flicks, ‘Night Of The Living Dead’ (1968) and ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ (1978), and found 2005′s ‘Land Of The Dead’ to have its charms, despite its flaws. But I had a horrid feeling about ‘Diary Of The Dead’, a project that didn’t fit with Romero’s original vision of zombie films, but is a self-contained concept.

I loved the way Romero infused the horror film with moral outrage AND humour, a kind of cinematic corollary to Frank Zappa in the music arena, if not quite as clever. ‘Night Of The Living Dead’ was a very simple film, but wasn’t just a mindless slasher; genuinely terrifying, it had believable characters and thoughtful dialogue, and worked as a metaphor for a lot of the frightening stuff that was going on in the so-called era of “peace and love” of the late ’60s. In ’78, ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ once again caught the mood of the times beautifully. In that film, the zombies had pretty much surged right through society. The film’s heroes were holed up in a shopping mall, but of course zombies had a habit of returning to the places they loved most in life, and of course Americans love shopping more than life itself so… ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ was a great social comment on society’s increasing reliance on consumer obsession to replace any real value placed on life and community. And it was damn funny.

‘Diary Of The Dead’ represents a return for Romero to an ultra-budget approach after the reasonably big bucks that went into ‘Land Of The Dead’. Its stars are a small group of film students, and theoretically, the whole film is filmed by one of them. It’s basically one day in the life (or death!) of these students as they grapple with a zombie breakout. There are some genuinely good ideas here, and in many ways Romero is as subversive as ever, as he explores this crazed, information-overloaded world we live in via a student who obsessively films the whole thing: he’s more interested in filming and downloading his footage to the Internet than helping his friends out during a zombie attack!

But somewhere along the way, things go adrift in this film, and it can’t be rescued. Whether it’s the low budget or that things weren’t thought through quite well enough, something about the script and narrative just doesn’t ring true, despite some good performances (amongst the uneven ones) and some great lines (amongst the poor ones).

Conceptually, Diary Of The Dead is worth a watch, and there are a few GREAT DEATHS. The pick-axe through two heads simultaneously, the guy who gets his head split right open, another guy who gets a chemical spill on his head, which then eats into his brain… so for those sick souls like myself who get a good giggle at such comic-book deaths, these scenes alone make the movie worth a look. Overall, however, Diary Of The Dead is a bit of a flop. Loads of features though. GARY STEEL

Sound Quality: 3.5 Picture Quality: 3 Movie: 2.5