CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 2/15/08

The Dead Finally Come Back to Life

By peter clines

Diary of the Dead

George Romero (also directed)

Several film students are in the woods, trying to complete a no-budget horror movie for their final project, when news comes over the radio that the dead are returning to life. While the cast and crew rush to get to their families and safety, however, fledgling director Jay (Joshua Close) sees this crisis as his chance to become a real documentary filmmaker. Diary of the Dead is a bit of a departure for writer/director George Romero, rebooting the franchise (and genre) he kicked off almost 40 years ago with Night of the Living Dead and its handful of semi-sequels. The "character" zombies that populate many of his previous films are gone, and the undead are once more made the unthinking and unexplained force they were in his groundbreaking classic. The script is far more about characters than gross-outs. Even the storytelling device, showing the audience these "real" events through Jay's camera work and an after-edit narration by his girlfriend (Michelle Morgan), is handled much better than many recent films (Cloverfield). After all, who else but a pretentious film student would hang onto his camera while running from a monster, and then favor getting the shot over helping a friend? Alas, this also becomes the script's one major weakness, as the characters remind us again and again of their rationale for picking up the cameras. While Diary far outstrips almost any zombie film made in the past decade, it's still just a bit too clumsy at times for across-the-board greatness.

Diary of the Dead
The Weinstein Company
Rated R; 94 min.

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Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

Diary of the Dead courtesy The Weinstein Company

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