Diary of the Dead Blu Ray review

The Film:

 

It is amazing, if you really think about it, that a director in his latter years can just pick up a camera, go into the woods, and film a movie. It’s what a young, fresh out of college filmmaker should be doing, not a legend. Most older directors have found their niche, their style, in which they are comfortable with. We also have a Hollywood system that believes in out with the old, and in with the new. Lately, some of our best older directors have been rediscovering themselves through smaller, personal projects, like Sidney Lumet’s ‘Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead‘ and Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Youth without Youth’. Mix the DIY aesthetic with this recent crop of older director’s reemerging and you get ‘George Romero’s Diary of the Dead’.

 

You get the sense while watching this film that Romero just wanted to get away with a small crew and shoot a damn movie. It’s the same type of thinking he had when he came up with modern horror’s first masterpiece 40 years ago, ‘Night of the Living Dead’. To call ‘Diary of the Dead’ a masterpiece is a stretch, but for it’s third act flaws this film is really good, regardless.

 

Like most Romero films, the basic story is simple. This time we have a young, college crew in the woods trying to film a low-budget student horror film, when news breaks about an epidemic that’s causing people to act violently. Once the crew recognizes some media manipulation of a recent attack, they get the idea that they must film what’s going on to tell the truth, show the truth, and maybe help people out. Romero’s films have always had subtext that ran throughout the film and this time he’s interested in media, from MySpace to camera phones to how news can travel from any source. Media is being bombarded at us from a multitude of sources. With Romero’s liberal thinking and the way news is handled today, he’s also interested in how the media centers can shape the news for an audience to believe what ever they want us to believe.

 

Subtleness has never been a strong point for Romero, but I don’t think it’s a flaw. He paints with broad strokes with an idea and it’s okay. We get what he’s saying. Many have claimed he beats us over the head with his points and I disagree. Like any good artist he just presents us with what he sees in the world. It’s nothing we don’t know about but we just accept-he doesn’t. FOX News is known as a conservative, GOP supporting network and CNN has been claimed to be the more liberal news network and both claim to be fair and balanced when reporting news. Who’s to say they don’t sway opinions to make their viewers believe in a certain way? They most likely do, Romero knows this and his characters have a rare ability to document in a non-objective way what’s happening. It’s what an audience deserves and rarely gets.

 

But let’s get to why Romero is Romero-he’s the Godfather of zombies and that’s why we see his films. Nobody delivers better zombie action that Romero and while he gets a ton a rightful credit, the real zombie master is Greg Nicotero. He’s been with George since 1985′s ‘Day of the Dead’ and has since added such imaginative looks of the zombies, their movements, their deaths, each scene with a zombie is expertly done, and you’ll understand why KNB Effects is the top-notch effects company. The real showcase of this is in the sequences in the hospital. The doctor zombie, nurse zombie, and patient are the film most memorable. You’d guess there’s only so many ways to kill a zombie in film, but that where Nicotero is the master. Just see the scene.

 

The film, in which I haven’t mentioned, plays out like ‘Blair Witch Project’ with zombies and I think that cinema-verite style, this faux-documentary, handheld style is not for everyone. While the camera does shake as much as in ‘Cloverfield’ I think people have a natural negative reaction to it. Here it works better than ‘Cloverfield for two reasons: one they actually keep addressing the fact that the camera’s battery runs out. How do they keep filming? How strategy is needed to recharge the battery and make in work in film. It’s a realistic approach. Two there’s a need to keep filming. Once again, if you think about it, if your friends are dying right in front of you, is there any reason to keep filming? In ‘Cloverfield’, no. After the 30 minute mark he should just dropped the camera and ran. At least here, it’s addressed in a variety of angles and situations. All films have an element of suspension of belief and here Romero recognizes it and tackles it in his narrative.

 

I think the film falters in its third act, when the crew goes to a friend’s house that is more like a mansion. It’s creepy enough and at times, Romero fans are reminded of how he almost directed ‘Resident Evil’ and what could’ve been but they film becomes a stalk-n-slash affair that whimpers out instead of soaring. It’s a minor quibble in a film that is a startling reinvention of Romero’s own universe and a director rediscovering a medium and it’s new tangents.

 

The Blu Ray:

 

Audio/Video: This is, what I believe to be, Dimension Extreme’s first Blu Ray title and the transfer is far better than I expected it to be. There are plenty of night scenes but on Blu, they come off sharp and clean with no visible noise or edge enhancements. I was pretty excited and now I can’t wait to see other film too from their label. The sound is good too and although the film isn’t a sonic assault but it features some good design, which is again more than I expected. This is a solid presentation.

 

 

For the Record: This is a pretty extensive documentary on the making of this film. Running about 80 minutes, it’s thorough enough for casual fans and hardcore Romero fans will eat this up (no pun intended). You’ll get interviews with George, the producers and the cast, each chiming in on working with each other and on this low budget film. Make-up, the CG effects and the camera work is also discussed, which is a nice inclusion. This doc is also broken up in 5 parts, if you don’t have the time to get it all in one sitting. This is the discs best extra.

 

Commentary: Here we have George and the editor Michael Doherty. They mostly describe the technical challenges of the shoot and if you’ve listened to a commentary track with George before, you’ll know he’s an easy and likable talker, making the track an engaging and quite listenable track.

Character Confessionals: This is a 20 some odd minute feature in which the characters from the film sit in front of the camera and chime in with their feelings on what’s going on. I really like Michelle Morgan’s and Shawn Roberts’; too bad they couldn’t have kept these in as they added some more heart to each character.

 

First Week: This short piece covers the first few days of shooting.

 

MySpace winners: George and MySpace had a contest for people to make a short zombie film and the 5 winners would be placed on this disc-kind of cool, if you ask me. Worth a peek once for curiosity.

 

Dimension Extreme’s first Blu ray is a top notch disc. For Romero fans this is a no brainer, as now his entire zombie films are out on BD (except Night of the Living Dead). I dug this film a lot, more than most critics, but I think they missed something. I can’t recommend this enough.

 

Rating: