Review: George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
I've got to say, some of the best zombie movies I've ever seen are not done by Romero. Yeah, he pioneered the genre and created a vision no one had seen before with Night of the Living Dead- but that movie has not aged well at all. Much better was his '91 (or 92', I can never remember exactly) remake of NotLD, although that may be because it has a cute redhead as the main character. I didn't much care for Dawn of the Dead (the only clever thing about it was the social commentary of the zombies all going back to the mall), and I never actually saw Day of the Dead. Land of the Dead, the most recent one, was decent (although I didn't know that luck still applied to zombies- the lead zombie must have been a 007 in a past un-life) but nothing special. The best zombie movies out there in my opinion are the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later. Shaun of the Dead deserves a mention in this category as well, although it's not realy a zombie movie- just a movie that happens to have zombies in it. However, I'd heard good things about this new one from Ain't It Cool, and the first-person perspective hook is always a draw as far as I'm concerned (done well, it draws you into the story in an unparallelled way- note my love of Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project), so I gave Romero another chance this weekend when I had nothing in particular to do.
In a word? Painful. The acting was painful, the narration was painful, the dialogue was painful, the story was painful, even the makeup for the zombies was painful. Let's hit these one by one. All the actors are unknowns, and will likely remain so, because not one of them can express a real emotion or even read a line without sounding like an idiot. One girl had the worst Southern accent I've ever heard in my life. I'm not sure if it was real or not; if it was, she ought to be ashamed. She was ostensibly from Texas, which explains why she can fix an RV as she does later in the movie. The professor (oh, by the way, the story is that this group of film students and their professor are out making a horror movie- how post-modern!- when Z-Day hits, and they all try to get home in a big ol' RV while recording everything for a new film that they'll post on YouTube. That's pretty much it) apparently decided he was Vincent Price when shooting started, and pretty much drinks his way through the movie while spouting grim and faux-deep lines. The main girl who provides all the narration could not sound more like she was just reading everything off of a card, but I suppose that's a natural reaction to having to read the banal writing she was given (an example: "In places during the movie I have added music and sound effects in order to scare you. I am trying to scare you." Or, even better- "It used to be us and them. Now, it's us versus them. Only, they are us."). The rest of the dialogue is no better (the main recorder, when confronted about his obsessive need to film everything for the 74th time, responds "Hey, I'm just trying to make a movie here!"). And, finally, perhaps the worst complaint that can be lodged against a handheld-cam movie ("Why the hell ARE they still filming?") is easily made against this one in quite a few points, particularly one scene where one of the girls gets jumped on by a zombie and the two people with cameras at that point run over to her- and then stand there recording her getting attacked. I mean, I know they're not family or anything, but I have to think some kind of action would be called for. The person who finally steps in to get rid of the zombie is the professor, who fires an arrow through its head (his character served in one war or another, which apparently means he knows how to use a bow- and a sword, later on). It's just ridiculous all the way through, and the only thing that kept me from walking out was that in places it was so terrible that it was actually funny. Particularly when they randomly drive into an Amish village because the RV breaks down, and meet an Amish guy named Samuel who is deaf (and therefore obligated to groan like a zombie because them deaf fellers talk funny, leading to him nearly getting fragged), who then saves them from getting snuck up on by a group of zombies, and proceeds to blow them up with a stick of dynamite. Let me reiterate that. The AMISH guy blows up zombies with DYNAMITE.
All in all, if they were going to make this movie, they should have made it a comedy Evil Dead 2-style. That way it could be intentionally funny instead of unintentionally. Instead it's just Romero saying the same damn things he's been saying with his zombie movies since the beginning, just with a return-to-lack-of-production-values twist. Avoid at all costs.
In a word? Painful. The acting was painful, the narration was painful, the dialogue was painful, the story was painful, even the makeup for the zombies was painful. Let's hit these one by one. All the actors are unknowns, and will likely remain so, because not one of them can express a real emotion or even read a line without sounding like an idiot. One girl had the worst Southern accent I've ever heard in my life. I'm not sure if it was real or not; if it was, she ought to be ashamed. She was ostensibly from Texas, which explains why she can fix an RV as she does later in the movie. The professor (oh, by the way, the story is that this group of film students and their professor are out making a horror movie- how post-modern!- when Z-Day hits, and they all try to get home in a big ol' RV while recording everything for a new film that they'll post on YouTube. That's pretty much it) apparently decided he was Vincent Price when shooting started, and pretty much drinks his way through the movie while spouting grim and faux-deep lines. The main girl who provides all the narration could not sound more like she was just reading everything off of a card, but I suppose that's a natural reaction to having to read the banal writing she was given (an example: "In places during the movie I have added music and sound effects in order to scare you. I am trying to scare you." Or, even better- "It used to be us and them. Now, it's us versus them. Only, they are us."). The rest of the dialogue is no better (the main recorder, when confronted about his obsessive need to film everything for the 74th time, responds "Hey, I'm just trying to make a movie here!"). And, finally, perhaps the worst complaint that can be lodged against a handheld-cam movie ("Why the hell ARE they still filming?") is easily made against this one in quite a few points, particularly one scene where one of the girls gets jumped on by a zombie and the two people with cameras at that point run over to her- and then stand there recording her getting attacked. I mean, I know they're not family or anything, but I have to think some kind of action would be called for. The person who finally steps in to get rid of the zombie is the professor, who fires an arrow through its head (his character served in one war or another, which apparently means he knows how to use a bow- and a sword, later on). It's just ridiculous all the way through, and the only thing that kept me from walking out was that in places it was so terrible that it was actually funny. Particularly when they randomly drive into an Amish village because the RV breaks down, and meet an Amish guy named Samuel who is deaf (and therefore obligated to groan like a zombie because them deaf fellers talk funny, leading to him nearly getting fragged), who then saves them from getting snuck up on by a group of zombies, and proceeds to blow them up with a stick of dynamite. Let me reiterate that. The AMISH guy blows up zombies with DYNAMITE.
All in all, if they were going to make this movie, they should have made it a comedy Evil Dead 2-style. That way it could be intentionally funny instead of unintentionally. Instead it's just Romero saying the same damn things he's been saying with his zombie movies since the beginning, just with a return-to-lack-of-production-values twist. Avoid at all costs.