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.
Continue reading ‘Diary of a Dead Sub-Genre: An Examination of Man’s Inhumanity to Zombie Movies’
