Zombie-A-Thon #7 - Diary Of The Dead (2007) - With Found Spoiler Footage

George Romero created the modern zombie. Of course, other people were involved with Night of the Living Dead (1968) but Romero is recognized as the father of the zombie movie in particular and modern zombie fiction in general. His is vision of zombies - slow moving, flesh munching, hard to stop unless you "shoot 'em in the head" - is the de facto depiction in pop culture. Deviation from this - the fast moving zombies of the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake - often lead to apoplectic fans, who declare that "that's not what zombies are like."

Romero has made other, non-zombie films (including two of my favorite low-budget films from the the Seventies The Crazies and Martin) but is best known for his six films featuring the undead. Night and Dawn of the Dead (1978) are generally recognized as classics of the horror genre. Day of the Dead (1985) was initially disliked by those who were not ready for its unrelentingly grim tone and dark, claustrophobic setting; however, over the years, there has been a lot of reassessing done and it is now seen in a much more favorable light. For my part, I loved it since I first saw it at a midnight showing at the 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan.

After a break of 20 years, Romero came back with Land of the Dead (2005), which has its moments, but has serious story and character problems. It did have a more "epic" feel than his previous films with multiple locations and a more wide-open feel. This is a nice change from isolated homes, shopping malls and underground bunkers. However, for his next two zombie films, Romero has gone back to smaller, more intimate (and lower budget) films.

Which brings us to tonight's feature, Diary of the Dead.

Synopsis

A group of film students are in an isolated forest shooting a horror movie for a class as the zombie apocalypse starts. As they try to survive, the director, Jason (Joshua Close) insists of filming everything that his happening. Along the way, they encounter a zombie infested hospital, a town run by heavily armed African-Americans, a deaf-mute, dynamite wielding Amish farmer and a group of rouge National Guardsmen. They make it to voice of reason (and narrator) Debra's (Michelle Morgan) home, only to find her family zombiefied. Finally, they arrive at rich kid Ripley's (Philip Riccio) home, where everything falls apart. Debra - hiding in the mansions panic room - uses the footage to make a movie The Death of Death and release it online. The fate of the survivors is let unknown, although things don't look very good. The end.

Analysis

I'll start with the "found footage" aspect of the movie. Normally, I dislike found footage movies. The conceits of the genre are generally used to hide bad effects, terrible acting, and threadbare production values. However, by setting this film up from the onset as a documentary Romero avoids some of the problems of plot and logic that mars many films in this sub-genre. As Debra says at the onset, "The film was shot with a Panasonic HDX-900 and an HBX-200. I did the final cut on Jason's laptop. I've added music occasionally for effect, hoping to scare you." There is a minimum of shaky cam - always good - and most of the action is shown clearly. Romero makes the weaknesses work.

There are some decent gore effects. The score sounds like something that a person would piece together on Garageband from clips, which works. The plot - small group trying to survive while documenting the disaster going on around them - is fine. There are some decent scenes - the hospital sequence is well done and tense, as is the finale.

However...the story, acting and dialogue are a mess. Starting with the cast, the highlight is Amy Lalonde as Tracy, a tough little gal from Texas. She seems to be enjoying herself. No one else is very good, varying between flat and somnambulist. So, strike one. The dialogue is a collection of cliches and slogans. One or two is okay...but no one speaks the way these people do. This is not uncommon in movies; however, when the film is supposed to be a documentary and when the script is unrelenting in the use of catch-phrase dialogue, it becomes annoying. So, strike two. The story isn't horrible; however, there are some serious flaws. There are a few moments of humor that don;t work. Of course, you can use humor in a horror film; but, the jokes and sight gags better be funny. Here, they seem out-of-place, like something a writer would have in a first draft - because it sounded amusing - but one re-reads would realize just slows down the pace of the film. There are moments of supposed tension which are anything but that. In particular, there are two moments with protagonist, narrator and film maker Debra, where she is supposed to be in danger. One, is in the town with the African-Americans where she badgers the leader into giving them supplies. The setup is that she won't leave, that he'll have to kill her, if he doesn't give in. Well, he has to give in, because she is alive to make the movie. The same applies when she arrives at her home and a) tells everyone to leave her there and b) she is attacked by her zombie family.

Romero likes to use his movies to comment on social, political and cultural issue. I applaud this. Movies don't always have to be about some great issue or make some deep statement about life, the universe and everything. When they are, however, it adds another dimension to the story and makes for a more interesting (although not always better) viewing. While never the most subtle of allegorical story-tellers, Romero here is hammering the viewer over the head with his message: that the spread of info technology has made getting to the truth harder, that "those damn kids" (as one character says "blogger, hackers, kids") have taken over for the old guardians of the truth, the professional media. Because e the message is delivered in such a ham-fisted manner it doesn't have the impact that Romero obviously thinks it does. While not as bad as Land of the Dead in this regard (where the message is so dumb and presented so poorly that it detracts from the film) Diary does not work as a social commentary film, even though that is what Romero wanted from it.

Verdict

Diary is not a bad film; it's just mediocre. Romero delivers some good gore, some good jolts and some arresting images. However, he also gives us dull actors, silly dialogue and a story whose main purpose seems to be to deliver a poorly developed rant against new media. So, if you see it on Netflix (or whatever) check it out. But, don't expect another Night, Dawn or even Day.

Trailer Time!