Over the course of film history,
there have been some pretty big changes in the lore of the zombie. If in Victor
Halperin's pre-code White Zombie
(1932 / trailer)
the zombies were still not exactly dead, most sure appeared to be by the time
of I Walked with a Zombie (1943 /
trailer)
and they all definitely were by the time of Hammer's voodoo-controlled zombies in
Plague of the Zombies (1966 / trailer);
then, but two years later, in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead
(1968 / trailer),
they weren't just dead, they were hungry.
George Romero (4 Feb 1940 – 16 July 2017), however, generally preferred them
dead, hungry, slow and meat-eating, although his dead are known to gain cerebral
sentiency (see: Day of the Dead [1985
/ trailer],
Land of the Dead [2005 / trailer]
and Survival of the Dead [2010 /
trailer]).
For a long time, however, his zombie movies have not been very scary, and the
humor (if present at all) too dry or ironic to truly notice, and the
allegorical message or theme loud and overt instead of subtle. Diary of the Dead is no exception — and
not very good, if you get down to it.
The story involves a group of
college students and their alcoholic professor Andrew (Scott Wentworth) in the
midst of filming a college project, a no-budget mummy flick, when the zombie
holocaust breaks out. Two of the group, Ridley (Philip
Riccio) and Francine (Megan Park), leave to
Ridley's nearby home, while the rest head off with director Jason (Joshua Close
of In Their Skin [2017 / trailer])
to get his girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan), the
omnipresent and all-explaining narrator of the movie, and then travel through
Pennsylvania to find her family. Along the way, Jason documents everything from
behind the camera, ostentatiously to document the truth, but more so because
he, too, is one of the many of the contemporary world that prefer to film than
participate — just, where most people have a Smartphone, he has a
product-placement camera. All along the way, society falls as the dead
increase...
Obviously enough, Diary of the Dead uses the "found
footage" technique — pioneered in Cannibal Holocaust
(1980 / trailer)
and made popular by Blair Witch Project
(1999 / trailer)
and long a flogged-dead horse — to create a megaphone critique of the
contemporary media and its dehumanizing effects as well as mankind's
estrangement from itself, not to mention the unreliability of the news media
and how the powers-that-be spin it. (Today, "the fine people" of
either side could, depending on their core beliefs, also interpret the film as
an expose of the "fake news" that Trump and his followers eternally
decry, or of the Trump government's addiction to spinning "untruth"
as reality.)
When it comes to Romero's
intention to create a critical movie, it is hard to fault the film: intention
and structure remains 100% true to one another, and just in case neither they nor
the events allow you to catch the critique and criticism, Debra brings both to
your attention a couple of times like some judgmental and didactic teacher who
has long given up on the intellectual capabilities of her class. Perhaps one of
the most theme-bludgeoning scenes of the movie is the last: When Debra reviews
some scenes Jason caught underway of some fine American citizens (as in
rednecks) blasting away at undead they have hanging in trees, after they blow
away a living-dead woman hanging by her hair and all that is left is half a
face, Debra intones "Are we worth saving? You tell me." as a badly
made droplet of CGI blood trickles from an eye of the half-face like a
teardrop. It is a portentous scene that generates all the laughter it wasn't
intended to, as well as an insane desire in the viewer to throw popcorn at the screen.
(Teacher, may we go to the bathroom?)
Due to the insistency and
constancy of the movie's sermon, everything else in the movie suffers.
Characterization is minimal at best, if unbelievable. As capable as the Texas
babe of the movie is — Tracy (Amy Lalonde of Heartstopper [2006 / trailer]
and 5ive Girls [2006 / trailer]) —
less than ten minutes after her beau, Gordo (Chris Violette), bites the dust
and she puts a bullet through his head, her main concern is lip gloss. Doesn't compute. Later,
in a tissy fit due to Jason's placement of project before person, she just ups and leaves
all her friends in a lurch — doesn't compute. And Debra: she travels across Pennsylvania to her family,
and though upset to find that they have turned, basically never looks back or
thinks twice about them (indeed, going by her voiceover, the loss of her
dick-ass boyfriend Jason bothers her more than her family). Alkie Andrew,
always so quick to help throughout the movie despite inebriation, not to mention a crack-ass bowman, suddenly
prefers to watch Eliot (Joe Dinicol of The Marsh
[2006]) die onscreen when he would well have had the time to run and intervene
(if only by loudly sounding a warning); and Jason cares enough about other
people go get his girlfriend, but is so obsessed with filming that he won't
help Tracy nor save himself? He literally films his last zombie until it bites
him, instead of using the camera as a weapon or simply dropping (or lowering)
it and running. Okay, to accept the concept of zombie apocalypse does mean stretching the possabilities or reality, but is too much to ask for realistic character development and human action?
OK, let's accept that in
stressful times people act oddly or inconsistently. But a horror movie should
also at least have a certain level of scariness and suspense at times, and Diary of the Dead has little of either — in part, admittedly, because, at least in Romero's movie, the found-footage
style generally kills both anytime there is a situation that should have one or
the other. (Rather unlike, say, in the highly effective Spanish semi-found-footage, quasi-zombie
flick, [REC]
[2007 / trailer].)
It also doesn't help that the special effects seriously suck most of the time in Diary: maybe the dead look
dead and real enough, as do the intestines spilling out of a body as it rolls
off a bed, but most of the CGI money shots — suicide by sickle, melting head,
whatever — look cheap and unreal and added after the fact. And considering how
much Romero always insisted the dead should move slow, some of them are pretty
damn fast: the first ones of the movie, an immigrant family, seem to be direct descendants of Speedy Gonzales, while others seem to have the ability to
teleport themselves into a situation, or walk faster than one can run.
In the original Night of the Living Dead, the first film of the kind, the fact that the
living dead always seemed to know where the living were was not bothersome
because the situation was so new that logic was suspended. By now, however, the
fact that dead always show up — even in droves, for the final scene — and
always seem to know exactly where the living can be found, is a bit bothersome.
Can they smell them? Hear the heartbeat? Was this coverd in an earlier film and we missed it?
Much like all of Romero's color
living-dead flicks, Diary of the Dead
ends with the fate of many characters, major and minor, left open. (Seeing that
the film is narrated in past tense, however, Debra obviously survives.) But
unlike in Dawn of the Dead (1978 /
trailer),
one doesn't really care enough about the survivors to wonder their fate — other
than the plucky Texas belle Tracy, that is. (Hope she found a new boyfriend, or at least some lip gloss.)
Diary of the Dead, hardly imperative viewing, is at least a
breather from all the humor-heavy zombie movies that saturate the screen of
today, for it is very, very serious. If it were only a little better, as
well...
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