Diary Of The Dead

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3.5/5The Film

When it was announced that George A. Romero's follow up to his mediocre Land Of The Dead would be shot with a group of teenagers out in the woods using handheld cameras exclusively, it sounded like the grandfather of the modern zombie film would be treading dangerously close to Blair Witch Project territory.

Jason Creed (Josh Close) is in his last year of film school and he and his crew - his girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan), classmates Tony (Shawn Roberts), Tracy (Amy Lalonde), Eliot (Joe Dinicol), Ridley (Philip Riccio), Gordo (Chris Violette) and Mary (Tatiana Maslany) along with their teacher, Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) - are out in the woods shooting a mummy movie. When the news reports come in that the dead are returning to life and eating the flesh of the living, the students decide it'd be in their best interest to get out of the woods and head for safety. Everyone piles into the Winnebago with hopes of making it back home to their families, but they soon realize that the plague has spread much further much faster then they thought. Making it home isn't going to be easy, if it's even possible. Adding to the group's tension is the fact that Jason intends to document EVERYTHING that happens to them along the way to create his ultimate documentary film, The Death of Death.

Diary Of The Dead begins with an absolutely stellar opening sequence that almost instantly renews our faith in Romero. While the rest of the picture is solid, if flawed, it can't match the pace of the first few minutes (ironically enough, the Dawn of the Dead remake had the same problem). That said, Diary Of The Dead hits more than it misses. While some of the humor backfires and the Maxwell character is pretty disposable, Romero has crafted a gritty and (in terms of zombie films) realistic horror film. While there are a couple of flubs and more than a few poorly rendered CGI effects in the film, at least most of the characters act fairly logically and as such we're able to suspend our disbelief just enough to get sucked into the picture.

While the handheld camera work can get dizzying and is sure to annoy some, the flipside of that coin is that Romero does make it work here. It does serve to put us in the characters' seats and in that way, dizzying or not, it's pretty effective. While Romero's message is very heavy handed and more than a little bit obvious this time out, that's nothing new when you think about his past films, his zombie movies in particular and it's interesting to get his take on how we, as average citizens, have become the media thanks to the rampant availability of video cameras and the advent of multimedia capability on the internet.

The performances from the young (and primarily Canadian) cast are strong enough to carry the film with Morgan and Close carrying the bulk of the heavy lifting on their shoulders. It's interesting to see how Close portrays his character as driven to capture the truth, to get reality out to an audience that is deceived by the mass media news organizations time and time again. Equally important to the core of the film is how Jason and Michelle's relationship is tried and changed by the events that take place in the film and by his obsession with documenting everything as it happens. Not everyone takes as kindly to having a camera shoved in their face as 'reality TV' would have us believe and for good reason.

Part road movie, part zombie film and part character study, Diary Of The Dead succeeds despite a few sizeable stumbles. Interesting that this low budget film would work better than the considerably more expensive Land Of The Dead, proving that Romero, for whatever reason, seems to work better on a smaller scale. Without major studio interference here he's crafted his best film in years. Maybe when you consider the problems with pictures like Bruiser and Land Of The Dead that isn't particularly high praise, but Diary delivers where those films did not. It may not necessarily look like a Romero movie, but at least it feels like one.

3.5/5Video

4/5Audio

4.5/5Extras

Dimension Extreme pulls out all the stops on this release and provides a true special edition DVD. The goodies begin with a commentary track courtesy of writer/director George A. Romero, director of photography Adam Swica and editor Michael Doherty. This is a pretty in-depth track that covers the making of the film in quite a bit of detail. There's a lot of emphasis on how Romero had creative control during pretty much the entire shoot. They also talk about the difficulties of getting certain parts of the film completed in one single shot. They talk about some of the celebrity voices that appear mysteriously throughout the film and they also talk about casting the picture and about shooting in a rural area of Ontario having it double for rural Pennsylvania. Romero talks about audience reaction and how anticipation can be as important to a horror film as the pay off, and how a lot of this particular film sets up the scares nicely by allowing the camera to wander just as a character would. It's a solid discussion from start to finish and really lets us get into Romero's head a bit to understand what he was trying to accomplish with this picture.

Character Confessionals (20:28) is a collection of supposed video confessionals that the Jason Creed character would have had Elliot, Tony, Tracy and Debra shoot while the events that occur in the film were taking place. While these don't change the tone or effect of the film much at all they do provide some background information on the characters.

A featurette entitled The First Week (4:19) takes us on set during the first seven days of the the film's shooting courtesy of filmmaker Mike Felsher. This is a fairly brief segment that's played with a good sense of humor but it does give us a quick look at how this picture was shot almost guerilla style with a small crew and on a low budget.

The Roots (2:04) is a brief featurette that explores Romero's inspiration for the film by letting the director discuss how, with this picture, he was going back to the roots he established with Night Of The Living Dead.

Familiar Voices (5:04) is a collection of audio recordings for three of the celebrity voices that appear in the picture in the background. We get to listen to Guillermo Del Toro, Simon Pegg and Stephen King all contribute to the picture.

Up next is a lengthy documentary from Michael Felsher and Graeme Potts on the making of the film entitled For The Record that is broken up into five segments, the first of which, Master Of The Dead: Writer/Director George A. Romero (13:18) allows the man himself to discuss his motivations for making the film and his thoughts on the finished product. Into The Camera: The Cast (17:03) is an informative collection of interviews with the principal cast members while You Look Dead!: Make Up Effects (10:55) is an interesting look at the special effects that were used to create the zombies and the gore effects used in the movie. A New Spin On Death: Visual Effects (18:59) is an interview with the two effects technicians who handled the effect work while A World Gone Mad: Photography & Design (20:21) is allows director of photography Adam Swicca to talk about his experiences working on the film while costume designer Alex Kavanaugh covers the difficulties and rewards of pitching in on this movie. All in all, this is a pretty thorough collection of documentaries that covers pretty much everything you'd want to know about the making of Diary Of The Dead.

Myspace Contest Winners is a collection of five zombie short films that were submitted to the film's Myspace page by independent moviemakers. The five films, which range from straight horror to slapstick comedy, are Grand Prize winner The Final Day (3:01), and First Prize winner's Deader Living Through Chemistry (3:03), Opening Night Of The Living Dead (3:15), & Teller (3:00), and Run For Your Life (1:42). Animated menus and chapter selection options are also included on the DVD. Sadly, the trailer for the film is absent.

3.5/5Overall

Film Rating		DVD Rating
Director:	George A. Romero	Film:
Writer:	George A. Romero	Video:
Released:	2007	Audio:
Cast:	Michelle Morgan, Josh Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Joe Dinicol, Scott Wentworth	Extras:
		Overall: