Weeklies
Movie: "Diary Of The Dead"
Year: 2008
Rated: R
Genre: Horror
Directed by: George Romero
Writing credits: George Romero
Reviewer: -RoG-
Posted: 2/20/2008
Plot: During the filming of of their own independent horror movie, some film students get caught smack dab in the middle of a real zombie outbreak and attempt to document it while simultaneously trying to survive.
Review: I saw this at the Nuart theater in L.A. recently and George Romero himself was in attendance. Pretty cool to have the zenith zombie man there and he had the most absurdly short Q&A with the audience I've ever seen. They let the audience ask Romero a whopping three questions, one of which was "Are we dead?" Believe me, I wanted to jump out of my seat and stab that idiot in the face too.
But enough about George, I'm here to talk about his latest zombie film, Diary of the Dead. Based on the plot, you'd think a lot of the movie was something along the lines of the Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield... but the camera work isn't nearly as shaky. It actually works well for all intents, but it's not enough to save the film itself.
First off, I think Romero unknowingly had one of the greatest zombie fighting characters in the history of horror movies on his hands and he didn't even realize it: a deaf Amish man who communicates by writing on a chalkboard. Our first introduction to him, he blasts some zombies with dynamite and then nonchalantly writes on his chalkboard, "I'm Samuel Hello". It's pretty much the greatest moment in the movie to be honest. I was ready to stand up and cheer because I thought the rest of the movie was going to be amazing with him in it.
Unfortunately, as I already said, Romero clearly didn't know what a perfect character he had on his hands, because shortly after, Samuel gets bit by a zombie and impales himself (and the zombie) on a scythe. Yes, Samuel knew how to kill zombies with style, but goddamnit... you can't kill off such a cool character like that right away. The only way Romero could make up for killing off Samuel at this point would be for him to make a completely separate movie about Samuel and his bucolic zombie fighting lifestyle. I'd pay top dollar to see that.
The rest of the characters I honestly couldn't care less about and most of the movie is fairly uneventful. I didn't feel like there were nearly enough zombie attacks taking place, just a lot of bickering about how we need to keep filming so any survivors in the future will know what happened! It gets old real fast.
Granted, the movie is a step in the right direction after the abysmal Land of the Dead, but that's not saying a lot. I honestly think it's a simple matter of Romero being past his prime. Even so, I'm glad he's still plugging away and I believe he still has a great zombie flick (or two) left in him.
For example, it's a FAR better movie than the upcoming Day Of The Dead release, which isn't really a remake of Romero's classic, but a completely different movie that pisses on everything that's cool about zombies. Let me put it this way, Diary of the Dead may be far from a perfect horror flick, but at least it didn't have fucking Spider-Man wannabe zombies crawling on the walls and ceilings like the new Day Of The Dead movie does. If you pay money to see that movie, get off of this site right now and don't return again until you've wised up. Hell, even if you don't pay money to see that movie, get off of this site right now and don't return again until you've wised up.
As for Diary, I'd say wait 'til you can rent it unless you're really aching to kill some time in your local theater.
Overall rating: 
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)
Reader Comments
I want to see a montage of Samuel doing his Amish zombie fight training in an Amish zombie fighting dojo.
We need to get back to the slow-moving, ever-creeping zombies. Those were cool. Sure, you could run away from 'em. You could kill 'em easily, often in very creative and fun ways. But over time the fun always wore off, and you'd be swamped with fucking zombies everywhere. Slow as they moved, there were always just more, more more. That's why they were so fucking scary. They didn't startle you, they didn't surprise you, they just didn't stop and didn't leave you alone. That's what made 'em scary: just when you thought you were king of the fucking zombies, some slow-moving, half-rotted security guard would bite your shoulder, and you were fucked.
until after I got home. I started thinking about all the stuff it lacked (i.e. the zombie attacks, less bickering, etc...) and just wish Romero could do what Zack Snyder did with his re-imagining of "Dawn of the Dead".
I still remember thinking how awesome the Resident Evil movie was going to be when Romero was attached to direct it. That entire franchise could have been his baby for the 21st century....<sigh> oh well.
I'm super keen to see Diary, but i'm not expecting something as classic as Dawn or Night.
Besides, how are zombies supposed to move? Organisms not undergoing metabolic processes (i.e. living) cannot generate new adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which powers nearly all cellular reactions by releasing the energy stored in its phosphate bonds. The binding of ATP to the myosin-actin filaments of the sarcomere (the fundamental unit of muscle) allows dissociation of actin and myosin allowing contraction or relaxation. When ATP is exhausted (at death, since oxidative phosphorylation coupling to ATP synthase ceases), the actin-myosin associations in the sarcomere are unable to be broken, resulting in rigidity (rigor mortis) which lasts several hours until degeneration of the sarcomeres either by spontaneous denaturation or by bacterial decomposition occurs. But even then, there's no ATP to power further contractions--which at best would only give you paralyzed, floppy zombies.
Another thing that sucks about zombie movies now, is the bullshit attempts to explain the cause of the zombies. In the good old days, it was curses or evil magic that reanimated the dead. Now, zombies (as well as werewolves and vampires) are attributed to "viruses." This is ridiculous. Viruses do 2 things: lytic viruses (like influenza) hijack the cell's ribosomal machinery to make more copies of itself until the cell dies, and latent viruses (like herpes)insert themselves as a DNA provirus into the host cell's genome and sit tight. Sometimes they are triggered into a lytic phase by cellular stresses. Latent viruses are linked to cancer, as they insert randomly into the cell's genome, and if they insert into the middle of a tumor supressor gene, that can result in cancer. Some latent viruses produce proteins (viral oncogenes) that closely mimic enzymes involved in cell cycle regulation, but are constitutively active, inducing uncontrolled cell division and cancer. Some viral proteins bind to and inhibit tumor supressor proteins (as HPV does, which causes over 99% of all cervical cancer). However, to even attempt to believe that a virus is capable of making people immortal, altering them morphologically, or giving them super powers is absurd.
incognit000, yeah I'm alllll about the slow moving zombies. Zombie that run, jump, crawl on walls or perform any other absurd stunts just don't work for me. That's one good thing about Romero though, he hates running zombies too and sticks with the slow, foot-dragging zombies that we've all grown to love.
Marthaeus Autolykos, I dunno man, I think you're trying to apply too much logic and reasoning to movies which, by definition, require you to suspend your disbelief and just have some stupid fun. As for killing zombies, I always understood them to be functioning on the lowest level - ie: just enough brain activity to make them move and desire to feed like an animal. And that's why you gotta shoot 'em in the head... you kill the brain, you kill the desire to feed. I do agree to some extent about the virus thing though... I always loved the classic depiction of zombies coming from voodoo, such as the Haitian zombies. The Serpent and the Rainbow handled this subject extremely well, and I recommend it to everybody.
honestly, he should have stopped there and basked in the glory forever.
of course he's got bills.
poor him.
but you make a good point.
amish vas zombies.
they wouldnt know it was coming because they dont have radios or tv,
but theyd haev tons of hand tools for it.
so itd be frikken awesome.
Seriously though, directors need to stop reusing the titles of good movies to make some quick dough.
Maybe with Ash!
Maybe making it a GOOD one with Ash, where he wins amazingly well; like he has to in the Evil Dead thingies.
on a toattly unrelated note, -RoG-, I found the Steven Seagal Lightning Bolt energy drink at Wal-Mart. Not sure why I'm telling you, just thought you'd like to know, i've never seen it there before. I have experienced the mighty Goji Berry, and it feels good.
So while I liked this one and think it's a pretty decent zombie movie, it's certainly the weakest of the series (though I should point out I really liked Land of the Dead). And you're dead on about the Day of the Dead remake; the fact that they even put the name of one of the greatest zombie movies ever (with Bub!) on it is a travesty.
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