Diary of the Dead (2008)
Directed by George Romero

Even though “Diary of the Dead” was made in 2007 and we’re only a month or so into 2008 I have to say that it’s my favorite horror film of the year (so far) and easily the most entertaining zombie flick to hit the screen in awhile. Honestly, if “Rambo” wasn’t so fucking brilliant in its excessive violence “Diary” would be my number one flick of 2008 with a bullet. Or perhaps I should say with an arrow.

I’m not going to waste anytime rehashing George Romero’s long and bumpy career. If his name is unfamiliar to anyone reading this then take the laptop of your belly brush the cheetos out of you beard and go buy “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “Martin” immediately. This is the man who more or less fashioned the zombie world that we now take for granted.

I went into “Diary” with my expectations as low as anyone else who sat through 2005’s “Land of the Dead.” While Romero’s last attempt at a zombie flick was a bit overdone, unintentionally cheesy and at times embarrassingly painful to sit through I was willing to cut the man a little slack. After all, “Land” was his first zombie flick in almost twenty years and while it wasn’t the film I wanted to see him make it wasn’t half as bad as the majority of zombie movies that had been released since 1987’s “Day of the Dead.”

Simply put “Diary of the Dead” is everything I wanted “Land of the Dead” to be. It’s full of biting social sarcasm, has some of the most inventive and original zombie kills I’ve seen in a long while and it’s got a deaf mute Amish guy tossing dynamite and hacking up slackjaws with a freaking scythe! Add to that a bunch of great audio cameos that would make Rob (“hey former horror icon, will you be in my movie”) Zombie jealous and you’ve got a recipe for success. On top of that, by returning to his low budget roots Romero was able to channel that same subtle horror that is prevalent throughout his earlier works.

“Diary of the Dead” treads the now familiar ground of a fictionalized film treated as found footage and does it way better than either “The Blair Witch Project” or the more recent “Cloverfield.” Rather than have one person running through the film with a solo camera, “Diary” follows a group of film students that are shooting a class project in Pennsylvania when the initial outbreak occurs. Romero was also smart enough to break up the potential monotony of his flick by presenting it as a faux documentary entitled “The Death of Death” containing footage assembled from the film students’ cameras as well as security cams, cell phones, helmet cams and other nonstandard forms of filming.

One of the more interesting things about “Diary of the Dead” is the frightening accuracy Romero obtains by using the film to expose what would happen if a zombie outbreak really occurred. While national news organizations downplay the effects of the attacks, videos begin popping up on YouTube and MySpace showcasing the global effects of what happens when there is no more room in hell. Romero also uses “Diary” to show how we have become a nation of voyeurs. It examines the devastating effects of constantly available entertainment and how it’s allowed us to become couch potatoes in real life situations, unable to stop watching the footage even when it’s happing at our very feet.

One of the film’s best moments is when a main character is being ripped apart by zombies; he lets out one solitary whimper “Shoot Me.” His friend answers the call by picking up both a gun and a camera and turns them both onto the soon to be devoured friend. It’s moments like that along with the great narration provided by the film’s star Michelle Morgan, that help “Diary” rise out of the mob of zombie movies that have been infecting local multiplexes. For better or worse, Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead” helped to inspire forty years worth of zombie flicks, hopefully “Diary of the Dead” can help inspire the next forty.

8 out of 10 zombie kids pinned to the wall with an arrow through the head

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