Diary of the Dead (2008)

While filming a horror movie for their college course, a group of students and their teacher find themselves in the middle of what appears to be a total zombie outbreak. One of the film students, Jason (Joshua Close) decides that this is absolutely something that needs to be recorded, regardless of what happens. In an attempt to figure out exactly what’s going on and find a safe place to stay, the group first heads to their campus before realizing it’s far worse off than they were. Jason’s girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan) suggests her family’s house as their next location, taking them on an adventure through a hospital and a fortified stronghold as they attempt to survive and keep the camera rolling.

Diary of the Dead is brought to you by the lord of zombies himself, George A. Romero, the man behind 1968′s classic Night of the Living Dead. Unlike other Romero movies, Diary of the Dead is more self standing and has quite a lower budget and feel to it. The story does however take place within the same world as his past movies, expecting the viewer to have a good grasp of how zombies and the undead work. For those of you who don’t know, you die, you become a zombie, you try to eat people.

The movie, which was in the works well before Cloverfield was, has a first person documentary style view of the world that received fairly negative press due to the two movies close release. While Cloverfield was supposedly a straight camera feed, Diary of the Dead allowed for the footage to be edited by the film students, which is thoroughly explained in the introduction. The character development is very strong, allowing for much larger differences in each individual role than has been seen in other movies shot in this style.

The movie isn’t all suspense and horror, but a majority of it will make you jump. Several parts will make you laugh as well, whether for the ridiculousness of the entire situation or due to the tongue in cheek humor.

The underlining tone of most Romero films have some sort of political intention. In this film, it’s clearly the distrust of mainstream media as is seen by the editing of footage broadcast on the major television channels, forcing those looking for the real answers onto the world wide web. Bloggers and YouTuber’s unite in this movie as they post all of the unedited and truthful accounts of the happenings around the world without anyone censoring a thing. Romero actually goes so far as to show some examples of this as well.

If random cameos are your thing, this movie is chalk full of them, ranging from radio broadcasts done by voices such as Stephen King, Wes Craven, Simon Pegg, and Guillermo del Toro. Unfortunately, these brief cameos alone out weigh the popularity of any actors in the film itself.

While nothing can truly measure up to the original, Diary of the Dead is an excellent take on Romero’s world of zombie infestation.