Diary of the Dead (2008)
Directed by George Romero
A Second opinion by Gary G.

God, I fucking hated this movie. Okay, so the concept of a zombie outbreak documented through the amateur shot video of a group of survivors has amazing possibilities. But George Romero’s Diary of the Dead fucking sucks. A great concept without a great execution is a great big load of pretentious shit. I don’t fault Romero for trying to do something inventive but this film is just poorly done. First of all the performances from this cast of nobodies are truly atrocious. The star of the film, Michelle Morgan must give amazing head because I can’t understand how such a monotone, un-emotive, Botoxed performance could be allowed to anchor this film. Even in her big, dramatic scenes she looked bored and uninterested. And the rest of this D-level cast are barely worth mentioning. But in all fairness what could any actor do with Romero’s groan inducing, on-the-nose dialogue. When the dialogue isn’t filled with repetitive filler (One guy is attacked by a zombie in the hospital, in front of his friends, and his girlfriend runs over to him and asks “What happened?’ Weren’t you just fucking watching? I was.) the dialogue is too often filled with preachy, ham fisted, oration’s on media manipulation, and annoying tech talk about uploading and shit. For Romero’s concept to work we have to actually believe, in some way, that what we are watching is real. But due to the horrible acting, and Romero’s inability to be subtle anymore, at no point do these people or their situation feel real. As such the entire concept fails. It can be done. Anyone ever see Man Bites Dog, a “documentary” on the exploits of a Russian serial killer? Some people still think that was a real documentary. And as much as I personally hated The Blair Witch Project at least it seemed like actual amateur footage. And Cloverfield is purposefully filled with the type of shallow, annoying people who would actually keep their camera phones running as people die around them. Romero has to have his self important characters constantly justify why they are filming their friends being killed with some of the most eye rolling speechifying this side of Crash.

Diary of the Dead is in my opinion one of the poorest films from a major director I have ever seen. Why are so many fans so easily impressed when a movie has some middling social commentary? Some reviews have the whiff of over excited fan worship. “Romero is Back!” “Romero is the King!”. Also why do things that actually have very little to do with the quality of the movie itself excite so many. This low budget production is supposed to be a return to Romero’s “indie” roots” which impresses people who are impressed by such things. Oh and did you hear that some horror icons have voice over cameos? So fucking what. Were you watching the movie or in a tizzy because you heard Steven Kings voice?

This film comes of so badly even Romero’s trademark black comedy fails to land. A lot of people are peeing themselves over the appearance of the deaf Amish guy and the Zombie clown episode. Both of these scenes are very short and in no way make up for the rest of this mess. It seems as if this films adherents were more interested in the idea that this would be a return to form for Romero and based their reaction on their own wish fulfillment. In fact this movie is an embarrassing degradation of Romero’s trademark style. While the other Dead movies allowed Romero’s social critique to subtly sneak through the story, Diary is as subtle as a frying pan to the face.

This film is all the fault of the EGG HEADED DESTROYERS that I took to task in a previous article. They’ve read too many books and seen too many documentaries exploring the underlying social commentaries in the classic seventies horror films and are now searching desperately for their own film to claim. And Romero, enjoying the smoke blown up his ass for supposedly starting the whole socially aware horror film, seems to be pandering to these egg-heads. But they forget one thing, no one cared or was looking for any such commentary when they first encountered movies like Last House on the Left and Halloween and The Hills Have Eyes and Romero’s own Dawn of the Dead. You really think that the first audiences to be scared shitless by the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre left the drive-in and said, “Wow. I loved how this film commented on the social divide between the crumbling rural backwoods and the invading city dwellers and how the break down of the family structure has forced these backwoods characters to create their own grotesque version of a family. This is fascinating. Lets discuss.” No. No. No. Two decades of post graduate theorizing has effectively crippled many viewers. They can’t help but watch a new horror film without searching for any subtext that they can use as a talking point at their next party, at the coffee shop or in their next thesis paper. If Romero wanted to go the arty and meaningful route he should’ve went all the way and given us something truly groundbreaking and genre defying like the work of filmmakers such as Michael Hanke (Funny Games), Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day), Takashi Miike (Everything he’s ever done), Francois Ozon (See the Sea), and Fabrice du Welz (Calvaire). Giving a movie props because it “comments” on something is bullshit if the film comes out like a badly acted After School Special. The San Francisco Chronicle review called this “a thinking man’s horror movie”. I guess if you don’t think much about anything Diary’s second hand satire may be a revelation. But George Romero should know how to make a sharp entertaining horror film satire that doesn’t scream MESSAGE! every five seconds. Maybe he forgot how to, or maybe he’s let the post graduate praise go to his head or maybe his experience on Land of the Dead left him so bitter he couldn’t contain his haranguing. Either way this movie still sucks

I could understand if you enjoyed the movie for all of the cheeky comedic bits and the gore, the stuff that actually works in the film. But every single positive review I’ve seen goes on and on about the social-fucking-commentary. So fucking what? Take the social commentary out and what do you have? The MAD starring Billy Zane. Did you see that load? Cheap comedy, bad acting, so so gore. It’s the same thing but no ones calling that a masterpiece. But Romero actually intends for his film to be scary and meaningful. It was neither. I’ll keep Land of the Dead, thank you.