With Diary, Romero went to the well one too many times. I liked the premise and the homage to his earlier work contained within. But they were overshadowed by the terrible acting, the mismashed uneven stroy, and the now very over-used hand held video camera work.
Before I saw this I had nothing but respect for Romero and his ability to reflect societies shortcomings through film. Night of the Living Dead is one of the greatest social commentary films of all time and Dawn of the Dead nailed our consumeristic nature. But now I get the sense that he's just to old and out of touch, with nothing else to say, which is sad. I hope he can find that spark again because I would really hate to see him go out on this note.

Because its Romero; Grade D

B-


I wasn't too impressed with Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, its inofficial follow-up is another small step down for Romero. He tries to be more "important" this time around, trying to make more of a social statement here than he did in Land of the Dead, but at times, he's just trying too hard and it seems like an old geezer is trying to get down with da kids.

His first-person camcorder approach is nothing original and its effect is diminished by the fact that you know that this is already an edited movie after it has been filmed and that what you see is simply not immediate. That takes away from the suspense and reveals at least one character's final fate.

There are still aspects the movie very well delivers on. It's pretty bloody and gory and some of Romero's statement really goes across well. However, mediocre acting (except for that film professor who's quite great), uninteresting character doing dumb things and the persistance to make a point hurt the movie. It has its effective moments (like in the hospital or during the final scenes in the house), but for a lot of the time it just drags on, alwass on the line between boring and not broing. It's okay, I'd say, but compared to toher films filmed in the same style, I can easily say that there are several better ones out there!

The "Dead" series has never really had the strongest acting. The best I'd say was in Dawn (or Land) and the worst was Day. With Diary he has painted himself into a corner. He's never had to write for anyone in their mid-20's, With the exception of one professor and some bit players, the entire movie is centered on twenty-somethings. A lot of the dialogue feels forced and fake. And worst of all it feels cliched. There are some parts of course where it's supposed to be, but there is a lot of it here.

And then of course there are the zombies/gore. Maybe it's the R-rating, maybe it was the limited budget, but something feels missing here. Zombies are shot in the head, one is sliced in half, but that's really it. It probably would've felt out of place in this kind of film, but where did all of the inventive kills go? For the first time for me in this series, the violence felt procedural.

However, despite a lot of dialogue, Romero's script is smart. I love it when Romero uses his films to criticize something and he is on the top of his game here. And unlike with Cloverfield, the documentary-style actually works here because Romero knows what he's doing. And there are some clever scenes in the film; the barn for me being the highlight.

In short, it's on the weaker side of Romero's films, but it's nowhere near as bad as Day of the Dead.

**½

DIARY OF THE DEAD - 7/10 (B-)

It probably helped having low expectations, but I actually enjoyed this one.

it had so much more potential, but given the very low budget Romero did a pretty fine job with this. Sure, it looks really amateur now that we've had something like Cloverfield, but I thought the way it blended some really cool gory sequences with an interesting message about humanity made it better than I thought it was going to be after listening to those awful actors go at it for a few minutes. Honestly, with some decent acting and sharper writing (their decision making "went full-retard"), this could have been one of Romero's better flicks. But yeah... he's too old and makes movies too rarely to still be a master of his genre, and it shows.

B-

For the curious, what exactly was this message you all speak of so vaguely?

4/10 -> D

Almost awful. The docu style and the narration is laughable here. Romero completely went off the rail here. Not that I ever found his film making great. This is the worst movie out of Romero's original Living Dead line-up.