DIARY OF THE DEAD
(Review)

“Jason always wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. But for his senior class project, he decided to try to make a horror film. That’s what he was shooting on that first night. The night when… everything changed.”
-- Debra

There were a number of recent horror movies (most from 2007) that chose to utilize the shakycam aesthetic popularized by The Blair Witch Project. Some of these, in turn, seemed to have drawn inspiration from the same spot in the collective unconscious, using the DIY doc approach to address some of the issues and anxieties we, as a media-driven society, face in this age of cell phone cameras and YouTube.
One of those films was George Romero’s fifth cinematic journey to the zombie-ridden world he created four decades ago, Diary of the Dead.

Diary chronicles the first days and nights of this new age where the dead are no longer content to stay still once they’ve stopped breathing. We view this radical and very sudden change through the eyes (and lenses) of a group of students from “the Pitt,” the University of Pittsburgh, who are in the woods shooting a horror movie entitled The Death of Death.
When the fit hits the shan though, the horror movie becomes all too real.

Now, first off, despite its low budget, I do think Diary is a far more ambitious entry in Romero’s Dead series than his previous Land of the Dead. It’s also arguably more of a horror movie for the YouTube generation than another recent shakycam horror film, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield.
However, that’s only because Diary is far less subtle in its approach.
That, for me, is one of the biggest problems of Diary: the social commentary is so heavy-handed, these kids make Michael Moore look like the Sultan of Subtle. Of course, to be fair, what we’re supposed to be seeing in Diary is a senior film student’s project, The Death of Death, so maybe the clumsy, elephantine manner in which the points are made is part of Romero’s overall scheme.
But the truth is, this isn’t actually Jason Creed’s The Death of Death that we’re watching, is it? It’s George Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

Now, when I look back at Night of the Living Dead, the social commentary is present, but it isn’t shoved down your throat. There are gut punches, certainly, particularly in the film’s final moments, but these moments aren’t accompanied by a voice-over and stock footage that belabour the point till it feels like Romero is bludgeoning me with his thoughts on why the human race may not deserve to be saved from its own largely self-propelled destruction.
And I haven’t seen either Romero’s Dawn nor Day in a yonk’s age, but I don’t recall them being as blatant and bullish as this.

There’s also the matter of Romero’s swipes at some of the other zombie-come-latelies. Yes, I do realize it is his party, but when he repeatedly makes reference to the speed at which dead things are supposed to move, and whether any dead person will come back to re-animated life or only those that have been bitten beforehand, I just have the distinct urge to yell, Yes, we get it! Now get on with the movie!
There are also the not entirely successful post-modern, self-referential touches, such as when Tony (Land of the Dead’s Shawn Roberts) refers to The Death of Death as a “Stupid f*cking mummy movie,” while their professor, Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth, from TV’s Kung Fu: The Legend Continues), quickly adds, “With an underlying thread of social satire.”
Romero is, of course, referring to his own zombie movies, and though I imagine it was meant to be self-deprecating, it doesn’t quite play like Romero taking the piss out of himself. Instead, it comes off as an arm-waving tactic, drawing attention to this very film, which, if you hadn’t yet figured out, isn’t meant to be just another stupid f*cking zombie movie.

My biggest problem though, the one I feel is the key to why I quickly felt a certain distance from the actions on-screen, is the less than satisfactory performances from the cast.
Sadly, the most obvious culprits in this case are Josh Close (who plays Jason Creed, and is the main documenter of the action) and Michelle Morgan (who plays Jason’s girlfriend, Debra Moynihan). Not only are they the most prominent characters in the group, but since Jason is the driving force behind The Death of Death, he is basically the eye through which we are viewing the film.
And, to put it bluntly, Jason is a d!ck.
Jason’s character is so singularly off-putting and irritatingly fixated, that even when I get his point, I end up not giving a rat’s a$$ because he’s so distinctly unlikeable. And Close—who appeared in The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the straight-to-DVD feature The Plague—does nothing whatsoever to make the character seem sympathetic. (You can’t really admire a guy who holds his self-appointed responsibility as a “shooter” to be more important than actually lending a helping hand to a friend who’s being accosted by a flesh-hungry zombie. This happens more than once, people.)

I get the climactic debate, about chronicling and disseminating the truth, against self-preservation, but Close’s Jason doesn’t seem at all convincing in this pivotal moment (just one of several that he flubs), his words hollow and without any genuine conviction.
Morgan doesn’t help much either, her Debra never really coming across as an actual person. Debra’s occasional professions of love for Jason may just as well be Morgan reading off items on a grocery list.
Or lines from a script.
And tragically, that’s what most of the cast sound like, as if they’re spouting lines that aren’t really theirs to begin with.
I’m honestly not sure how closely Romero stuck to his script, or, if like Cloverfield, there was a fair amount of improv that went on in Diary. Because if there was, then I guess it boils down to the acting talent of the cast.
None of them seem natural, which of course, just draws attention to the fact that this is a fiction, and not a document of an actual occurrence, thus compromising the film’s basic integrity. I mean, if Cloverfield succeeded in making me buy the notion of a giant monster ravaging New York City, then I’d like to think convincing me of a zombie epidemic would be easier, right?
As it is, I can at the very least, look back at Land of the Dead and say, Hey, at least Romero had actors in it.

I wanted to like this, truly I did, and I take no pleasure in the negative vibe this review is oozing. To be honest, I don’t hate Diary; that would be for far less ambitious and lazy films (like, say, Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead redux).
Diary, like all the other Romero Dead films, is saying something. Something important.
I just wish he’d said it in a softer, and more convincing tone.

Parting shot: Reviews of Romero’s Land of the Dead and Miner’s Day of the Dead, can be found in the Archive, along with other recent zombie cinema entries, 28 Weeks Later, Plane Dead, and Boy Eats Girl.
The article “Revelations (Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)”—which discusses Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead remake and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later—can also be found in the Archive.

(Diary of the Dead OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of fangoria.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (28)

January’s coming ‘round again, and it’s time for another year at Sundance.
As usual, there’re a bunch of films on the schedule that I’ve been looking forward to for some time, some that I’ve been hearing good things about, and some that pique my curiosity from the strength and allure of a magickal synopsis. (Film synopses are courtesy of sundance.org.)

From the first category (films I’ve been looking forward to for some time):

Be Kind Rewind: written and directed by Michel Gondry; with Jack Black, Mos Def, Mia Farrow, and Danny Glover; from visionary music video director Gondry, who gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and La Science Des Reves (The Science of Sleep)
Synopsis: When a man whose body accidentally becomes magnetized unintentionally erases every tape in his friend's video store, the pair set out to remake the lost films, including Back To The Future, The Lion King and Robocop.

The BrØken: written and directed by Sean Ellis; with Lena Headey and Richard Jenkins; the sophomore feature from Cashback director Ellis, I mentioned this in my Cashback review (see Archive)
Synopsis: On a busy London street a woman sees herself driving by in her own car. Stunned, she trails the mystery woman as events take an eerie turn into a living nightmare.

Choke: based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, adapted and directed by Clark Gregg; with Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, and Kelly MacDonald; I loved David Fincher’s adaptation of Fight Club, so I’m curious to see how Choke translates to the big screen
Synopsis: Choke is the sardonic story about mother and son relationships, fear of aging, sexual addiction, and the dark side of historical theme parks.

Diary of the Dead: written and directed by George A. Romero; with Nick Alachiotis, Matt Birman, George Buza, and—get this—Wes Craven, Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, and Guillermo del Toro! I mentioned this in my Land of the Dead review (again, see Archive)
Synopsis: When a group of film students making an indie horror film find themselves trapped in a world being consumed by flesh-eating zombies, they cleverly switch gears and use the camera to document the world crumbling around them.

Transsiberian: directed by Brad Anderson, written by Anderson and Will Conroy; with Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, Thomas Kretschmann, Eduardo Noriega, and Sir Ben Kingsley; I’ve mentioned this a number of times ‘round these parts, particularly in the El Maquinista review (yes, again with the Archive)
Synopsis: A Trans-Siberian train journey from China to Moscow becomes a thrilling chase of deception and murder when an American couple encounters a mysterious pair of fellow travelers.

From the second category (films I’ve been hearing good things about):

Los Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes): written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo; with Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernandez, and Barbara Goenaga
Synopsis: A man accidentally travels back to the past, only to meet himself there. He also encounters a series of mysteries—pieces of an unpredictable jigsaw puzzle of terror, drama, and supsense—that all lead to an unthinkable crime.

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People: written and directed by Bruce LaBruce; with Jey Crisfar and Katharina Klewinghaus
Synopsis: A lonely gay zombie searches for love and meaning in contemporary Berlin.

And from the third category (synopses that have piqued my curiosity):

Baghead: written and directed by Mark and Jay Duplass; with Steve Zissis, Ross Partridge, and Greta Gerwig
Synopsis: As previously done in their last film The Puffy Chair, the Duplass Brothers explore the minutiae of relationship dynamics in this in-depth study of a group of desperate actor friends. And a bag. And a head.

Donkey Punch: directed by Oliver Blackburn, written by Blackburn and David Bloom; with Robert Boulter, Sian Breckin, and Tom Burke
Synopsis: After meeting at a nightclub in a Mediterranean resort, seven young adults decide to continue partying aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean. But when one of them dies in a freak accident the others argue about what to do, leading to a ruthless fight for survival.

Peur(s) Du Noir (Fear(s) of the Dark): directed by Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Callou, Richard McGuire, Pierre Di Sciullio, and Lorenzo Mattotti, written by Jerry Kramsky, Pirus, and Romaine Slocombe; Artistic Director: Etienne Robial
Synopsis: Ten leading graphic artists and cartoonists have breathed life into their phobias and nightmares in this animated feature.

Reversion: written and directed by Mia Trachinger
Synopsis: In a world in which the past, present and future simultaneously unfold, a woman whose genetic mutation leaves her devoid of morality struggles to preserve her romance with the man she loves.

Sleep Dealer: directed by Alex Rivera, written by Rivera and David Riker; with Leonor Varela and Luis Fernando Pena
Synopsis: Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

There’s also:

Funny Games: Michael Haneke remakes his own well-regarded 1997 thriller with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth
Synopsis: A family settles into its vacation home, which happens to be the next stop for a pair of young, articulate, white-gloved serial killers on an excursion through the neighborhood.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: based on Michael Chabon’s novel, adapted and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber; with Jon Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Sienna Miller, Mena Suvari, Nick Nolte, and Thurber; I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Summerland, so I’d love to see this and hope Chabon’s writing resonates on the screen as well as it does on the printed page
Synopsis: The film chronicles the defining summer of a recent college graduate who crosses his gangster father and explores love, sexuality, and the enigmas surrounding his life and his city.

Red: directed by Trygve Allister Diesen, co-directed by Lucky McKee, written by Stephen Susco; with Brian Cox and Tom Sizemore
Synopsis: An older, reclusive man's best friend and inspiration for living is his 14-year-old dog named "Red." When three troublesome teens kill the dog for no good reason, the grieving man sets out for justice and redemption by whatever means available to him.

Towelhead: written and directed by Alan Ball; with Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Toni Collette, and Summer Bishil; I love American Beauty and Six Feet Under, so I have high hopes for this one
Synopsis: The life of a 13-year-old Arab-American girl is illuminated as she navigates her way through the confusing and frightening path of adolescence and sexual awakening.

Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?: directed by Morgan Spurlock, written by Jeremy Chilnick and Spurlock; Super Size Me was great, and so is 30 Days, so I hope Spurlock hits this one out of the park too
Synopsis: Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock explores every nook and cranny of the Middle East on a quest to find the world’s most wanted man.

It should be noted that most of these films are not in official competition, and will be found under the Spectrum, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight out-of-competition sections.
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival will run from January 17-27, 2008, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah.
Check complete list of films in competition here, and films out of competition here.

(OS’s courtesy of firstshowing.net [Be Kind Rewind] and impawards.com [Timecrimes and Funny Games]; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com [The BrØken and Otto].)

reVIEW (31) 
LAND OF THE DEAD
In preparation for the upcoming Diary of the Dead, here’s a look back at George Romero’s Land of the Dead.

In 1968, then 28-year old George Romero shot a little black-and-white movie in Pittsburgh, and in the process, not only gave birth to the zombie film as we know it, but also became the Father of the Horror Film as Social Commentary. That movie was the original Night of the Living Dead.
Nearly four decades later, and Romero has returned for a fourth zombie outing in the Land of the Dead, ushering us back into the world whose rules he pretty much wrote in Night, Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985).
Here, Riley (Simon Baker, TV’s The Guardian and The Ring Two) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) are mercenaries on the cusp of retirement, about to pack in the supply raids and zombie shooting for new lives, while Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) is the big man of Fiddler’s Green, an exclusive community for the powerful and influential, surrounded by the hordes of have-nots huddled around its skyscraping, climate-controlled glory. And in the ruins of suburbia, the walking dead seem to be regaining a semblance of sentience…

Navigating this simmering cauldron of societal unease with the confidence of a well-traveled journeyman, Romero once again tells a tale of survival horror which is far more than just flesh-chomping and head-exploding grue.
In the wake of modern civilization’s fall, trod upon remorselessly by the shuffling feet of the living dead, Romero posits the emergence of three discreet societies: Fiddler’s Green, the co-opted, jury-rigged society for the privileged few; the urban squalor of the sprawl, a more organic community, growing fungus-like in the leavings and detritus of the Green, the masses scrambling for warmth and protection through osmosis; and the living dead of suburbia, finally waking from their long sleep of apathy.

It is by the clash and grind of these societies that the tale of Land of the Dead is told, a tale of individuals trying to make some sort of sense of the world they find themselves in, of the hand Fate has dealt them.
Riley wants out, Cholo wants in, while Kaufman, the author of much of the misery and injustice we witness in Land of the Dead, sees the Green as his God-given right, by virtue of his having taken it and molded it into what it is; very American attitude, that.
Paradoxically, Kaufman even turns the milling masses into a mirror image of the walking dead, taking the “bread and circuses” maxim and giving them vice and entertainment, keeping them oblivious to the inherent wrongness of the situation.

Ironically, it is the dead of suburbia, cruelly stripped of their cognition and humanity, who first begin to stir themselves into concerted action, finally tiring of the abuse heaped upon them by the bands of the quick who repeatedly invade their territory to steal food, medicine, and supplies. (Admittedly, all of this is now useless to the dead, but it is, after all, the principle of the thing, and the flagrant disregard the quick have for them, that becomes the bloody bone of contention here.)
In the sprawl, it is only agitators like Mulligan (Bruce McFee) who try to stir up the flames of revolution, while the masses are kept occupied by gambling and bloodsport (just as the zombies are, initially, fixated by the fireworks displays of Riley’s “sky flowers”; this, in itself, a chilling echo of man’s own inherent tendency to stare, fixated, at gaudy displays of hollow “entertainment,” while his world crumbles and decays around him).

Admittedly, Romero does what he does best in Land of the Dead; manage to pack all of that (and more) into a movie that is ostensibly about flesh-eating zombies. Somehow though, there was still a part of me that wondered why he chose to return to territory he’d already charted so well in the past.
Yes, in the wake of the success of 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead, zombies are once again part of the horror du jour landscape, but Romero is so much more than the zombie guy.
As I recall, Monkey Shines was a tense, nasty little shocker, and all that had was a psychotic monkey. Nope, no shambling, hungry undead there.
Of course, what did he choose as a follow-up but yet another zombie movie, Diary of the Dead.
Strangely enough though, given my tainted approval of Land of the Dead, I’m actually anticipating Diary, as it appears to be Romero’s return to independent filmmaking, and he seems very excited about the work.
And hey, if George Romero is excited about something, then any self-respecting horror geek would be excited about it too.

Parting shot: Asia Argento (daughter of legendary Italian director Dario Argento; who starred opposite Vin Diesel in XXX and headlines the highly anticipated La Terza Madre) is Slack, the nominal love interest here.
Also, appearing in zombie cameos are long-time Romero collaborator and special make-up effects guru Tom Savini, as well as Shaun of the Dead duo, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

Parting shot 2: A review of The Ring Two can be found in the Archive.

(Land of the Dead OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is an altered version of the review originally titled “Dead Like Me.”)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (14)
“The Attack of the Living Dead Afterthought”
(A Companion Piece to “Revelations”)

If you haven’t read “Revelations” (Archive: July 2007), please do so, so as to give this installment of Afterthoughts a proper context.

If you look carefully at “Revelations (Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema),” the article is more a focus on then-current zombie cinema than of apocalypse cinema in general. I took that tack (and chose that title) though, since I thought it would be an easier sell to my editor, as the mainstream movie-going audience at that time (2004) would most likely have known the doomsday scenarios of Armageddon and Deep Impact more readily than they would George Romero’s Dead films.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised though, if an out-and-out article on zombie cinema would get the greenlight today without much trouble.
And that’s because a lot’s happened since 2004, events that have brought the rotting, flesh-hungry hordes into the bright spotlight of media attention. Zombies are one of the hot trends of horror du jour, and our recently-returned dearly departed are making the most of their Moment in the sun.

With the box-office success of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, studios big and small hopped on the zombie bandwagon and brought us such excellent entries in zombie cinema as Edgar Wright‘s hilarious Shaun of the Dead and Andrew Currie‘s interesting boy-and-his-zombie tale, Fido. On the downside, we’ve also been saddled with the dead on arrival attempts at zomcoms, Dead and Breakfast, Boy Eats Girl, and Plane Dead.
Undisputed Zombie King George Romero returned to the apocalyptic world that made his career with Land of the Dead, Robert Rodriguez brought us to Planet Terror as his half of Grindhouse, and the French gave us Robin Campillo‘s Les Revenants (They Came Back), the only arthouse zombie film I’ve ever come across. Boyle also made his own return trip by producing the lacerating and explosive follow-up, 28 Weeks Later.

Meanwhile, trudging towards us from the horizon are Steve Miner’s remake of Romero’s Day of the Dead (with Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames as Capt. Rhodes, the brother that Rhames’ Kenneth from the Dawn of the Dead remake refers to; I’m going to have to assume they’re supposed to be twins), as well as Romero’s Diary of the Dead, where some college students shooting a horror movie encounter some real zombies and decide to go cinema verite.
There’s also Zack Snyder’s zombie epic, Army of the Dead (though this may not come at us for quite a while, as Snyder’s currently knee-deep in his Watchmen adaptation). In it, a father struggles to save his daughter’s life from the ravenous zombie hordes in a quarantined Las Vegas.

But what was perhaps the most intriguing zombie development didn’t quite get out the gate: CBS got a pilot together for something called Babylon Fields, a “sardonic, apocalyptic American comedy-drama where the dead are rising and, as a result, lives are regained, families restored and old wounds reopened.” Michael Cuesta (of Six Feet Under and Dexter) was set as executive producer, and directed the pilot.
Sounding like a blackly comic spin on Les Revenants, I was pretty stoked about this, but sadly, CBS chose not to pick Babylon Fields up as a series.*
I mean, am I the only one who wanted to see zombies represent themselves on the small screen? There are vampires aplenty: on the lamentable Blood Ties, and the upcoming Moonlight (yet another vampire PI) and from Alan Ball, True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire books, so why not zombies?

But I guess the networks aren’t ready to release them onto the TV screen on a weekly basis just yet. Oh well…
I suppose we’ll just have to content ourselves with seeing them mill about the multiplexes. Don’t forget to buy extra buckets of popcorn. You never know. They could be persuaded to eat something else other than your brain…

* Then again, who knows? Maybe Cuesta can pull a Mulholland Drive and turn Babylon Fields into a feature film. Here’s hoping…

Parting shot: There are also “vampire zombies” (whatever those are exactly) on the way in John Moore’s upcoming Virulents, based on the Virgin Comics title.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Boy Eats Girl, Plane Dead, 28 Weeks Later, Dexter, and Blood Ties can be found in the Archive.

(Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Land of the Dead, and Day of the Dead OS’s courtesy of impawards.com; Les Revenants DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)