George A Romero's Diary of the Dead Review

Written by: highsnare   

George A. Romero is the inventive director of zombie movies. George did not invent zombies, but he did invent the modern zombie and the movie zombie. He created what I would consider a whole new genre to film. Most people are probably less enthusiastic about zombie films than I am, but it's my favorite kind of movie. Romero's latest film is quite a unique direction. After Land of the Dead I was really excited about where George would go from there and what he would do in the field he created. When I heard that Diary would be a retelling of an initial attack I was a little off put by it. George always seemed like the kind of creative talent who wanted to progress and not re-hash what had been done before. Diary of the dead doesn't advance the zombie genre any but it is an interesting experiement in film making and is definately a push in a new direction.

First off the bat, this film is nothing like The Blair Witch Project. It's very relevant and acted out like as if a play. Every character is designed for a reason to act the way they do, so as to include you as one of them. At it's best moments the film is very good and offers very many killer lines, but on the downside to this style of film making every actor must be very good at all times. Where this movie fails are scenes that are to an extent laughable. It really is an interesting movie to watch and has several great scenes and the dialouge is spot on as well. There are very spooky scenes in which the gang is walking about abandonded places and you really do feel like you're there. The main thing that I wanted to see dropped was the voice narration.

It really did bug me at times when the movie was flowing well and then narration would throw everything off. It is well worth watching the movie even with it's flaws. I believe that in todays world it's a hard effect to achieve a movie that is scary like the way this movie is scary. Scream redifiend the horror movie and everyone has been either apeing off of that or off of pure gross-out effects, this movie is very raw and is truely creepy and scary. I do believe this is the movie that George has been wanting to make and I hope to see more innovative film making from him in the near future.