Diary Of The Dead

Director George A. Romero’s wallet has been cursed over the years. After copyright blunders and companies going bust, the rights and earnings of many of his most successful films have not found their way to their owner, the man who single handily created the much-loved but critically maligned zombie genre with Night Of The Living Dead in the 1960s,.

It’s not surprising that Romero returned to his roots. Land Of The Dead (2005) was widely criticised for its manufactured studio-cued scares and Diary Of The Dead makes an obvious attempt to correct that. The problem is the full effect of the film has undoubtedly been diminished by what the now widespread use of the hand-held “diary” approach . The moment Diary of the Dead hit US screens it was in the company of the monster mash Cloverfield and the Spanish zombie film, REC, not to mention Brian DePalma’s anti-war diatribe Redacted, all of which use the first person perspective video camera technique. Not that these film’s were the first, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and the box office sensation The Blair Witch Project (1999) both did it previously to great effect. The whole technique has become hackneyed and this works against the film, despite the director’s tirade against modern media and the internet.

Unusually for a Romero script the director has populated his film with a long line of stereotypical characters. From the cynical alcoholic teacher to the poor little rich boy home alone, to the obsessive cameraman, we have seen them all before. Romero’s classic films were full of the marginalia of the world, and this made them fascinating to watch. When watching this bunch of frat teens getting chomped on, one can only reflect that the groundbreaking casting of a black lead in Night of the Living Dead (1968) seems so long ago. Saying that, Romero’s steady hand still manages to hold the film together and it moves forward at such a breathtaking pace that you barely have time to worry about such frivolous things as characterisation.

SFX-wise Romero always had a good eye for the climactic death scene and while much of the impact of the bloody moment are lessened by the weak acting and an over-reliance on CGI, the great man’s talent for carnage is still evident for all to see. You just can’t, however, help reminiscing about his partnership with make-up man extraordinaire, Tom Savini. The gore in Dawn Of The Dead (1978) may have been unrealistic at times but the visceral effect of real make-up outweighs the technical flash of modern day CGI-FX work. It has to be said this is more a comment on the state of horror genre as a whole rather than Romero’s work in particular and despite misgivings, Diary Of The Dead has plenty to offer the cadaver-aficionados.

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