Diary of the Dead: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by George A. Romero, 97 minutes, rated R.

The latest George A. Romero movie, “Diary of the Dead,” is the director's fifth film in the “Dead” franchise, the likes of which began in 1968 with the groundbreaking classic, “Night of the Living Dead,” before moving on with 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” 1985’s “Day of the Dead” and 2005’s “Land of the Dead.”

That’s a whole lot of undead for one man to put forth, and the good news is that Romero often comes through with the goods. This movie might be his weakest to date, but it’s never less than good, gory fun--and it beats the hell out of those “Saw” movies.

From Romero’s own script, “Diary of the Dead” mirrors the recent “Cloverfield” in that it offers a first-person perspective of what potentially might be the end of the world.

The film follows filmmaker Jason Creed (Joshua Close), who as the movie opens is busy shooting his own low-budget horror film with his girlfriend, Debra (Michelle Morgan), a handful of their classmates and their drunken professor (Scott Wentworth) when the dead suddenly appear and start to attack. Leaping into their Winnebago, off they go into the night, all while keeping tabs via the Internet on how quickly the world’s inhabitants are falling prey to the world’s undead inhabitants.

Naturally, a virus is the root of the problem, one that has brought about “the death of death.” The rest of the movie is just what you expect--Jason and his posse on the run, some of whom get devoured while others manage to kill the zombies with a well-paced bullet to the head. If you know Romero, you know how these movies go down, but what’s nice to see is that the director hasn’t lost his nimble touch with the unexpectedly funny, throwaway line, of which there are several in “Diary.”

The zombies are just as you remember them--still a hot mess for human flesh, with the gore they unleash more over the top than ever. If there’s a disappointment in the movie, it’s that Romero abandoned the intriguing idea he raised in his last film, “Land of the Dead,” in that the undead now don’t have the ability to reason. Here, they’re brick stupid, but Romero makes up for it by broadening the social, philosophical and political themes that have laced throughout his franchise from the start.

In “Night,” he tackled issues of race, prejudice and family. In “Dawn,” he took his zombies to the mall and lampooned consumerism. Later, in 1985’s “Day of the Dead,” he skewered science and the military, while in "Land," he attacked America’s love affair with land and real estate. Now, he has his sights set on our need to capture everything on video, particularly ourselves, all presumably for the sake of documenting history. But at what cost? In this movie, the answer isn’t a surprise, but it’s still fun to watch it play it out.

Grade: B