Hey folks, Harry here... Anton Sirius sent in this review from Toronto of George Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD. I absolutely agree with Anton's review here. Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD I fell in love with. First off - it is its own universe. Second - this is the first time that George has taken on the zombie tale from the point of view of youth. Here you have a group of college aged kids that when the world goes upside down... they just want to go home. And the horror of finding out what home is in a world of the living dead... well, it's painful. I'm proud that we're getting to bring George and this film to FANTASTIC FEST in about a week. Here's Anton with more details on the film...
George Romero's Diary of the Dead (2007, directed by George Romero) It takes a certain sort of bravery for a artist to go back to square one and begin again. I'm not talking about a studio-ordered "re-imagining", or a nostalgic career overview here; I'm talking about someone willing to take a story they've already done successfully, strip it back down to its basic premise, and tackle it afresh. Even in comic books it's rare for a writer to re-do their own character's origin. The arrogance inherent in (and necessary to?) the creative process leaves little room for thoughts like "My first, best take on this story may not have said everything there was to say..." That exactly what Romero's managed to accomplish here. Diary of the Dead does not extend the universe he began with Night of the Living Dead, and which ended (maybe?) with Land of the Dead. Instead he goes back to square one, boots up a new zombie-free universe and re-creates that first night all over again, only this time the date is 2007, not 1968. What's the point, you ask? The point is in the story, of course. Simply put, the 'hint of social commentary' Romero wanted to inject this time around focused on the way our society has become media-drenched and media-obsessed, and that couldn't be accomplished in a universe without a media-heavy infrastructure of cell phone cameras, YouTube videos and 24/7 cable news. So out go the zombie armies of Day and Land of the Dead, and in comes a new group of innocents forced to deal with the rules of death changing overnight. And not only does it work, the result is a damn good movie, one that is just a slight notch below Dawn and Night in the Romero zombie pecking order. Two things stood out for me. One is the fact that the gore quotient is rather low. This is going to disappoint some people, but it fits the movie Romero is making here. Simply put, watching zombies eat entrails doesn't carry the shock value it did forty years ago, and there's no reason to focus on it. This isn't a film about zombies. This is a film about people distancing themselves from disasters and pain and life by putting a camera lens between themselves and the world around them, only in this case the disaster in question is the death of death. The effects in the film are top-notch (with Greg Nicotieri overseeing them they couldn't be anything but top-notch) but they are used relatively sparingly. The second smart thing Romero did, which didn't strike me until well after the credits had rolled, was create a universe without any zombies at all. Not only is there no plague of walking dead, there are no pop culture references to zombies for the characters to fall back on. No NOTLD, no Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide, no endless stream of first person shooters that improbably become Mila Jovovich franchises. The characters in Diary have to learn the hard way that zombies can only be taken down with head shots, and that a bite is fatal. They have to gradually realize all over again the desperate math of Day, and deal in their own ways with a future without hope. While there are occasional winks and nods to the previous movies in the series, the film is doggedly not self-referential. The question of course is where Romero goes from here. Does he go back to his original set-up, and pick up where Land left off? Does he continue to explore his brave new world? Or does he head off in a completely new direction, now that he's freed himself from the need to stay on one path? Wherever he goes, it's nice to still have confidence in Romero's ability to make the trip worthwhile.
