Diary of the Dead

You can’t keep a good horde down. Yes that’s right, the fifth in George A Romero’s zombie quintet finally shambles onto UK shores. Old school gorehounds like yours truly get jolly excited at the prospect of a new zombie flick, raised as we were on a charming diet of exploding heads, gore-strewn guts and eviscerated soldiers. Lovely <drools uncontrolably>….

Once again the dead rise to roam the earth due to an unspecified scientific accident, or perhaps as the man says, ‘when there’s no more room in hell…‘. Romero returns much more to the feel of his early low-budget, guerrilla filmmaking roots with the undead armageddon being captured on video-cameras by a group of student film-makers who just happen to be making a low budget horror film of their own. The footage is predicitably uplifted to the web as the carnage unfolds and the body counts starts to rise…..

To be honest after the disappointing ‘Land of the Dead‘, a new Romero zombie film doesn’t fill me with the quivering fanboy anticipation that it would have a few years ago. I will of course still catch a new zombie picture on the big screen as I am a massive fan of the original trilogy – a combination of films which are amongst the best horror flicks ever made, up there with all the old Universal pictures of the 1930’s, the Italian giallos (isn’t this one of the best film titles you’ve ever heard?), the occult films of the 1970’s (The Omen, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby) and many of the better slasher films of the 1980’s and 1990’s. I’ve been hearing great things about a cycle of explotation & horror films from Indonesia of all places which I will start to track down, although I’m not confident about their availability on any format.

Unfortunately, the film is a goner and lacks any real bite. Ha, can you see what I did there? It becomes a bit of a road movie as the students travel back to their homes to find their families and is all so formulaic – drive, zombie encounter, death. Drive, zombie encounter, death. Romero usually has some interesting, unusual characters in his films not a bunch of witless students some of whom, it has to be said, really cannot act. There is never any sense of the global epidemic, of society itself disintegrating into anarchy and hysteria, no aura of terror or horror.  It has a few  moments, when they get to the Amish farm for example the film ratchets up a notch and you get a sense of real threat as the place becomes surrounded by the ghouls. In this sequence there are actually some amusing moments, (my favourite being the footage of the zombie clown at a children’s party which is quite perversely amusing), but these are the rare pearls in this major disappointment.

   

I’m getting a bit exasperated at the continual use of youtube and laptops, facebook and myspace being employed in movies in an effort to generate some vague ‘cutting edge’ kudos. If you look back at some of the films I’ve reviewed this year – ‘Cloverfield’, ‘Be Kind Rewind’ – you can see this being repeated ad nauseum. ‘Diary’ is even being referred to as a ‘reboot’ of the series, and uses the found footage technique which I’ve already discussed in my ‘Cloverfield’ review. Give. It. A. Rest. It’s all a bit like watching your Grandad dance to the Arctic Monkeys – embarrassing and just not right. It’s not edgy, it’s not hip, it’s mainstream and boring now.

   

Chronologically, Romero’s zombie films have examined racism, consumerism, vivisection and slavery, the War on Terror and ideological insanity and I suppose there is some sort of message about contemporary USA hidden amongst the corpses. It makes much of the fact that the authorities are suppressing details about the outbreak and only through social networking sites can the truth be revealed – so, governments lie to their populace? Well hell, I’ve got a newsflash for you – this is not news. It all ends on a terrible line of dialogue, much to the effect of ‘but hey, who are the real monsters? Do we really deserve to be saved?’ Sixth form stuff Mr. Romero, grade D-….

  

Probably the one thing I can thank for the film was the enormous fun I had researching the links. I stumbled across this gem which is a series of programmes that was essential viewing for a budding cult film fan back in 1980’s.  Due to an almighty trademark cock-up the original ‘Night’ is in the public domain and can be seen here – ‘they’re coming to get you Barbara….look, there’s one of them now’ is a great moment. I should also recommend this which takes much the same premise as ‘Diary’, a zombie outbreak, student film makers and a verite approach, except this time set in the UK. It was released last year and is OK, worth a look. One horror film I am looking forward to this year is ‘The Orphanage‘, a spooky Spanish little number that has already been getting strong reviews.