Member venoms5 Posted May 26, 2008 Member Share Posted May 26, 2008 DIARY OF THE DEAD 2007 (released limited theatrical 2008) Joshua Close, Scott Wentworth, Michelle Morgan, Joe Dinicol, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Phillip Riccio, Megan Park, Chris Violette Directed by George A. Romero While shooting a horror film, a group of film students are alerted to a shocking revelation that without any known explanation or reason, the dead have suddenly begun returning to life and devouring the living. In the hopes of returning to their homes, the group takes to the road in their RV. One of the students, Jason, decides he will document civilizations declining moments on his video camera in the hopes that it will be found later should this nightmare ever end. Refusing to believe what has actually transpired, the cruel and shocking truth finally sets in when some of the group are killed or kill themselves after being thrust into this horrifying situation. The remaining friends travel from place to place encountering not only horror from the zombie onslaught, but from the living as well. The survivors finally make it to a friends mansion wherein safety is assured but soon realize the nightmare is far from over. I watched this last night and thought it was great. Romero got full creative control and according to one of his interviews and a portion of the commentary I listened to, he had a ball making this movie and it shows. As mentioned in other reviews for the film, the shaky cam is never intrusive and nowhere as "all over the place" as some other movies utilizing the same technique. I can't even recall a scene where you couldn't make out what was going on. Aside from a few odd dialog choices, I had no problem with the actors. Romero fashioned a fun and often times scary zombie-road movie. Eschewing the original series, Romero goes back to the beginning starting over from scratch but placing the zombie outbreak during our time now. The whole internet/myspace/youtube plot point is brilliant. The people are obviously aware that there is only a limited amount of time before they will be unable to let people know what's going on by way of uploading video footage via the internet. The frightening realization that the plague has spread all over the world comes when they pick up a signal from a young girl in Tokyo. Many of the scenes in the film are perfectly captured considering so many sequences play without edits or very few cuts. Also, Romero recreates certain scenes from his earlier zombie movies such as the tenement sequence at the beginning of DAWN OF THE DEAD and the squabbles between Ben and Harry from the original NIGHT as to what is safer, the basement or the upstairs. Here, there is question whether the remaining group should lock themselves inside a panic room or remain within the huge mansion they find themselves in at the conclusion. This huge mansion was another nice touch considering Romero was first attached to the first RESIDENT EVIL movie. His script followed the video game very closely and would have been awesome if he had gotten to film his vision of that film. Here, the scenes involving the mansion have a macabre look and feel similar to the first RE game. Not to mention there are zombies on the grounds. The remaining group make it to their friends mansion and find him acting strangely. Soon, they find that his entire family and servants have been turned into the flesh eating dead. The only minor complaint I have with this film is I could have done without the narration and the music. The main heroine says at the start that she has cobbled together this footage in the hopes that civilization restores itself, people can see what happened. She also says that she has put music over the footage in the hopes of scaring the viewer to add further notary that something like this should never happen again. The music is fairly minor and seldom is heard, but I thought it would have been better if it had been shot "live" without any music whatsoever. The movie still has lots to say in regards to Romero's usual social commentary and the zombie attacks are plentiful and varied. Some CG gore has been employed but according to Romero, it was necessary since a number of scenes are shot without edits and using squibs and prosthetics would mean lots of multiple takes as this film was shot fast which was a decision on Romero's part. If LAND OF THE DEAD had been a success, Romero had talked about a sequel that would involve the dead reckoning truck and the same characters from that film but that wasn't to be. Apparently, Romero is now planning a direct sequel to DIARY OF THE DEAD. It looks like the documentary style of shock filmmaking is the in-thing right now and if the super scary and creepy Spanish zombie horror flick [REC] (2007; a US remake is already done and ready for theaters under the title QUARANTINE; trailer online) is any indication, this format isn't going anywhere for a good while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Snake_and_Crane Posted June 12, 2008 Member Share Posted June 12, 2008 This movie was terrible. Completely unnecessary plot design for a Romero movie. If they would have just shot the movie without the boring dialog, the movie would have felt less like a film school project. Do not even waste a rental fee for this one. I am a die hard fan of the Romero dead movies, and I wish he would do a sequel to the new Dawn of the Dead along the lines of Day of the Dead, but keep the damn zombies walking! Why oh why do they have to keep ruining these great movies with crappy remakes and sequels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member venoms5 Posted June 12, 2008 Author Member Share Posted June 12, 2008 This movie was terrible. Completely unnecessary plot design for a Romero movie. Apparently Romero didn't think it was terrible since he wrote it and judging by the commentary he is very pleased with it. A number of scenes in the film are shot without edits and that in itself is impressive. It seems just as many people are divided on this one as were divided on LAND OF THE DEAD. I've enjoyed them all for there diversity. This film, like all movies, has some faults but the good far outweighs the bad here at least in my eyes and there's FAR WORSE movies out there than this. It seems Romero's "fans" all want another DAWN OF THE DEAD style movie and that isn't happening at least not anytime soon. The many that complained of LAND's gun toting and thinking zombies apparently never read Romero's original and highly ambitious script for his initial version of DAY OF THE DEAD which featured armies of intelligent, thinking zombies and big set pieces. I wonder if those same individuals would have levied complaints at that film had it been made at that time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member thehangman Posted June 12, 2008 Member Share Posted June 12, 2008 I thought this was the worst of the five films,did nothing for me atall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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