Diary of the Dead (George Romero, 2007)

[colinr0380]

I suppose Bridget Jones's Blog doesn't carry the same caché!

[chaddoli]

Looks like it'll make a great double bill with Cloverfield.

Looks a lot better than Cloverfield.

[Antoine Doinel]

Poster

[colinr0380]

I'm looking forward to this a lot. Although Land of the Dead didn't manage to match up to the earlier three films watching it again recently I found it had grown on me (though I'm still surprised that the scene that seems to perfectly capture a Romero zombie film - Leguizamo's character solving a zombie problem in one of Dennis Hopper's neighbouring apartments - was only included in the unrated DVD). One of the best qualities of Romero's films is that they allow you to fully enter into the world and explore it almost independently of the characters and the plot. It is disturbingly fun to pretend you have free run of the shopping mall or the underground bunker or are in one of the few safely boarded up houses. The power of Night, Dawn and Day is that they set up this security and then make it oppressive, destroying it from unexpected places as people go back to petty squabbling once the immediate zombie threat is contained. I love that construction and the way that the collapse comes through those internal problems with the zombies providing the gory climax as the fundamental but ignored issue finally overwhelms everyone (the problem I have with many other zombie films is that they try to put the undead front and centre where the genius of Night, Dawn, Day and Land is that they remain a (still extremely deadly though) part of the background).

I finally got around to reading Romero's original script for Day of the Dead that is included as a DVD-ROM extra on the Anchor Bay disc over the weekend and was surprised at how different it was from the film that eventually ended up on screen (for example Dr Logan and Bub, arguably the most important characters in the film, never meet in the script). I was left thinking that the finished film, as well as being cheaper to make, solved a lot of the problems the unmade script had in a more elegant way (removing the Barter Town concept, which makes a modified appearance in Land; limiting the cast of characters), but liked the script enough to think that a kind of alternate universe Day of the Dead 'remake' could be made that would follow that early script. It would satisfy executives looking for name recognition in their remakes and would keep far enough away from the earlier Day film to stand a chance with both Romero fans and a wider audience.

Until that Day I'll look forward to Diary!

[jbeall]

Really? I thought Land of the Dead was terrific. I like its prequels as well, but I really thought this one was a high point in the series.

[colinr0380]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it a lot and Dennis Hopper's performance was great - it has certainly been the best of the recent zombie film cycle along with They Came Back - but I'll need more time to let it grow on me.

There seems to be an expansion and contraction occuring within the series of films: Night is the absolute classic focused on one siege where the claustrophobia of not knowing what is going on except for what is shown on television or heard on the radio is mirrored by the posse not knowing who is friend or foe at the end; Dawn is just as good while broadening the canvas and turning everyone into packs of roaming opportunists, enjoying the good times while they last; Day is almost the opposite again narrowing its focus back to a group who now might be the last survivors, or at least the last survivors of the old system of law and order (and science) having trouble readjusting to a new world. Land opens everything back out for a while with the first real crowds of human characters in a Romero film and the zombies just being another class below the working joes - true 'untouchables'. The stratification of an unequal society being one of the last surviving remnants of the old order as the privileged are the last to be touched by the chaos around them.

I like the idea of Diary being another reduction from the almost Hollywood style of Land - it makes the swing in style even more extreme. I like to think of this expansion and contraction, whether intended or not, as sort of replicating a person's final dying gasps! Maybe we'll get the fully zombified film in the end in which no living characters appear that runs in the style of the end of L'Eclisse (or filmed through the eyes of now unmanned CCTV cameras) for three hours with various undead characters occasionally shuffling through frame and only a hint of a narrative?

[Barmy]

This is a terrible film. The only Romero I haven't liked. I hope it puts the final nail in the coffin of diary films.

The acting was some of the worst I've ever seen, and not in a so-bad-it's-good way. I cared so little about the characters that I wasn't even rooting for them to die. There is no plot (in the Q&A, Romero said story wasn't important to him but all his other films tell a story). There is a stupendously lame bit where the fiction movie they are making at the beginning is repeated "for real"--good idea but pathetic execution. The zombies are completely characterless and blah. Not a single one of them does anything remotely interesting. Needless to say, the film looks hideously cheap and ugly. It is ludicrously contrived--yep, we get several bits where the camera falls on the floor at just the right angle to film the action. The message--people film EVERYTHING with those newfangled video cameras--how DESENSITIZING--is dated and, worse, just dumb. THIS is an "issue"? Compare that to the political elements of the previous Dead films.

Still, it is better than "Redacted".

[tavernier]

It's official: Barmy is really Armond White.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

New York Times interview with Romero.

[colinr0380]

Another interview.

Also, I did have an idea, and that idea had come even before we started to shoot Land Of The Dead. I was stunned by the effect of all this emerging media, and how everybody was getting sucked in not only as viewers, but as reporters. It says on CNN that if you see something outside your window, shoot it and they'll put it on the air. I wanted to write something about that.

This reminded me a little of the segment of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe that was made by Adam Curtis which theorised about the way journalism has changed.

[Antoine Doinel]

Hey Canadians! There are free screenings of the film across the nation. Get your pass here.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

More interviews with Romero:

San Francisco Bay Guardian

L.A. Times

Filmmaker magazine

[Barmy]

Free is way too much to pay for this mess.

[jbeall]

NY Times review.

[John Cope]

Yeah, Barmy's right, this is pretty awful. It actually starts off well but very quickly it becomes clear that the good stuff is sporadic indeed.

Part of the problem is related once more to the issue of irony. While Diary is probably a better film than Cloverfield that ain't saying much and a different version of the same problem persists. In fact, I'm inclined now to think I was a bit harsh with Cloverfield (just a bit). In that one the lack of irony seemed a very real problem (and, actually, it is given the picture's hipper-than-thou sensibility), but I'd rather have a movie be committed to formal principles (in this case, even lame-o notions of "entertainment") that go beyond providing a forum for Grand Statements and half-baked political rhetoric.

Diary has irony to spare but it has no idea what to do with it and mishandles it every chance it gets. I don't personally believe that the whole idea of recording or "documenting" real time trauma is as much a non-issue or dated in its relevance as Barmy would have us think. There's still much to be got from this concept, just not here. And the reason for that is that Romero simply doesn't trust us and can't allow his images to function on their own without persistent meta-commentary. He lacks confidence, in other words. Obviously in order for that to be true this "lack" must be pretty deeply ingrained after decades of filmmaking but I just don't see any other explanation for this method of presentation. If it's meant to be critique it's a pretty daring gambit that doesn't pay off. The mash up of campy parodic elements and the solemn romanticizing of self-serious pronouncements from the cast make it impossible to suss out any consistent point of view and renders the results incomprehensible from that angle. The ponderous, numbing references to angels and saints as protectors, for instance, can only be defended as representative of shallow sentimentalizing; it's shallow because it's not felt, it exists just as a reference within a rhetorical strategy. Yet there's no implication of critique either. So we're left with that sort of thing existing on the same textual level as the portentous grandstanding. All sincere? All foolhardy? If it has to be one or the other that feels pretty limited to me.

Now I have to confess that I've never been a huge fan of Romero. I appreciate some of his stuff to one degree or another but it always seems to me that he's hitting his points way too hard; to say he's heavy handed is to put it mildly. This wouldn't be an issue if the points he hits so hard were just the entry way to larger social considerations but it almost never feels like that to me. What it does feel like is a series of isolated moments in time which resonate with unearned self-satisfaction for their purported profound insights (the whole bit in Land, for instance, in which the zombies are no longer effected by the fireworks--i.e. ruling class distractions--or later when the "working class" ascend into Fiddler's Green; if Romero had a handle on his material he might have wanted to emphasize the implications of this ironic ascent). Great writers and theorists like Brad Stevens, Tony Williams and Steven Shaviro can and do find much of worth in Romero so I acknowledge that such a thing is possible but I tend to think that this is because they come at his work from an already fully developed perspective and respond to Romero because they find things in his films that bear out their own philosophies. That makes their work worth reading. As such, I appreciate the theory more than its immediate subject.

Does Romero really feel it's necessary to underline his points again and again by having his characters tell us what we should by rights already understand? Evidently he does. The "irony" in this picture is suffocating and useless because it exists only in self-awareness and as self-conscious gestures. I'd like to give Romero credit and propose that this is meant as critique of shallow thinking but I doubt that; I suspect it's more likely the embodiment of such thinking, a false sense of fertile comprehension. This extends to the bizarre, though typical of Romero, depiction of the disregard for the loss of friends and family. The respect for mourning as a process is virtually non-existent. We're not dealing with Twin Peaks here.

I'm sure the argument is that he's showing us how quickly qualities like compassion and respect for human dignity are sacrificed in times of distress. But this J.G. Ballard defense is hard to muster when Romero gives us nothing but caricatures from the start; there's no effort made to even gesture toward a deeper relationship amongst them as that would, of course, divert from the relentless forward movement of quickly diminishing dividends.

Thank God there is some tossed off humor that works--such as the bit about recognizing the State Trooper because of his "stupid looking hat" or the bit straight out of Night of the Creeps: "We need to get her a doctor." "Yeah, a live one.". That stuff indicates that Romero does get the limitations of his characters' respective visions, grasp on reality and capacity for insight. Too bad so much of the rest is unduly self-serious: "If it didn't happen on camera it's like it didn't happen, right?" This is repeated twice lest we didn't get it the first time. Ugh. Paging Lost Highway for Christ's sakes. So much of this stuff, like the Professor's breathless reflections of war time atrocity is virtual parody, though unintentional which makes it slightly sad to watch. I should respect Romero's earnestness but, sorry, I just can't.

There is one fascinating aspect to Diary though. We're set up from the beginning to perceive the media as an unreliable purveyor of truth, as essentially servant to a government committed to engendering fear in its populace. This is designed to encourage our suspicion of major media outlets versus the amateur tech heads and bloggers as the implication is that major media is either government controlled or indebted to "special interests". But this suspicion has an interesting result. The media presentations we see are actually more to do with pacification and the characters respond as though insulted by these "lies". Thus we're left with the surprising suggestion that the media lies to us because, in fact, they don't fear monger nearly enough. Once again I'd like to give Romero credit for complexity but I'm more inclined to read this as just flat our incoherence.

There are many, many echoes of other films here, of course. There's the obvious Blair Witch set up and road movie follow through, but the "students making a horror film" angle also recalls Bob Clark's Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and Anna Campion's considerably less campy Loaded. The fortress at the end is out of 28 Days Later. Beyond that, there's the "panic room" complete with video bank which brings to mind, well, Panic Room of course and even Phillip Noyce's unfairly neglected Sliver. The rather interesting idea of the main character documenting the dissolution of his own relationship before him was previously broached in Egoyan's Calendar and the main girl's wistful and forlorn narration is very similar to Gabrielle Anwar's in Ferrara's Body Snatchers. To be fair, you're probably better off seeing any of these. Hell, you're probably better off seeing the zom-com The Mad with Billy Zane.

The final video download sequence is potent stuff to be sure (and indebted once again to other sources--here Romero's own earlier work and even A.I.) The unfortunate thing is that this is one of those endings too strong for the silly, aimless movie that has preceded it. Still leaves you with a sting though.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

and even Phillip Noyce's unfairly neglected Sliver.

I hope you were being ironic with this statement.

[maxbelmont]

To be fair, you're probably better off seeing any of these. Hell, you're probably better off seeing the zom-com The Mad with Billy Zane.

I knew you would somehow throw Billy Zane into the conversation. I am, however, going to be one of the few to purchase DOTD when it's released on disc. Thank you John Cope for warning me that DOTD may not be as good as I'm hoping.

[John Cope]

As if in proof of my earlier assertion, here's Shaviro's take. It's an interesting one, particularly his typically trenchant Deleuzian observations.

Still, I'd have to side more with Adam Nayman's recent piece. Sorry Steven (actually I'm 0 and 2 lately as I also disagreed, though very respectfully, with his assessment of Boarding Gate).

[foggy eyes]

An interesting piece, although Shaviro makes the film sound a hell of a lot more interesting than it actually is - certainly not like the tired, heavy-handed muddle I saw.

This grotesquerie is echoed in the final moments of the screen, where we see Net footage of some white-middle-American hunter types, somewhere in Pennsylvania (the very people whom Obama was accused falsely of having a condescending attitude towards) having a grand old time as they hunt zombies for sport. (This also somewhat echoes the ending of Night of the Living Dead, where the black man who has survived the horror in the house is killed by the same sort of good ol’ boys, who casually take him for a zombie). The female protagonist narrator wonders whether, if this is what we are like, we are actually worthy of survival. It’s a real question, and one to which no easy answer can be given.

Sure, but Romero doesn't half make sure that he clunks us over the head with it. Every question raised throughout the film was over-emphasised and re-iterated to the point of exhaustion, and this final sequence turned out to be the icing on the cake - if the principal issue at hand isn't perfectly obvious, here's the fucking banal voiceover to drill it home. It's worth remembering that similar sequences in Dawn of the Dead were handled with none of this sermonising bollocks - and were far more effective.

And don't even get me started on the utterly ludricrous behaviour of the lead male protagonist. Would anybody really be that inhuman in such a situation?

I'm with Barmy on this one - all the way.

[maxbelmont]

Diary of the Dead is a film that I have been looking forward to since I found out that Romero was going to do another dead film. As time went along and I kept reading about this knowing that he was abandoning the original idea of continuing the storyline from Land. I picked this film up from work today and I don't know what to make of Romero's film. DotD is something that is going to take multiple viewings to establish a pulse on whether or not Romero executed what worked in his previous four films.

I won't get into the meat of the plot which should be moot given the multiple posts on this film. One of the central themes in DotD has to do with capturing current events in a multi-media world. The politics that seem to invade most of Romero's work is at play here, but with DotD, the politics are thrusted upon us at the beginning with the newscast of the immigrant who killed his family. The issue of immigration is not the center of the film, but lingers.

Media is the central theme in DotD like the meltdown of the nuclear family in Night, Commercialism in Dawn, the Military/Scientific complex in Day, and the economic/social class system in Land. John Cope mentioned in an earlier post about the lack of irony in Romero's work and, so far, I don't see it either. Also, there has always been this satiric undercurrent, but Romero has seem to miss the point. We may have been given that in a subtle way when at the beginning of the film when the students are arguing about the merits of their film, one of the characters says, "There is always an audience for a horror film." Romero was probably talking about a bigger picture and talking about how there is this sense of voyeurism in the media nowadays.

DotD is Romero's way of telling us that we are no longer reliant on traditional media. We live in a world where we get our news in other ways whether it be on the internet, cable, or websites such as YouTube. Even one of the characters downloaded a viral video of an Asian woman that she found on one of the message boards on YouTube. At the same time, the group turns on the news and notices that the footage was edited to fit the "agenda" of the news station. In this case, Romero does make a good point that most 24 hour news channels do, in a way, a sort of multi-media manipulation to establish their viewpoint. In the film, the character Jason argues his point of filming in order to have an accurate portrayal of the subsequent events. The question arises on whether or not this will fly over with whoever will watch his footage with a sense of cynicism. Romero puts in some stock footage with corresponding reporting of the number of people with cameras.

There is one fascinating aspect to Diary though. We're set up from the beginning to perceive the media as an unreliable purveyor of truth, as essentially servant to a government committed to engendering fear in its populace. This is designed to encourage our suspicion of major media outlets versus the amateur tech heads and bloggers as the implication is that major media is either government controlled or indebted to "special interests". But this suspicion has an interesting result. The media presentations we see are actually more to do with pacification and the characters respond as though insulted by these "lies". Thus we're left with the surprising suggestion that the media lies to us because, in fact, they don't fear monger nearly enough. Once again I'd like to give Romero credit for complexity but I'm more inclined to read this as just flat our incoherence.

John Cope is dead on with this point. Romero plays this off lazily with one of the characters using the "tree falling in the forrest" analogy with if it's not on camera then did it really happen? The only reasoning that I could come up with in defending Romero's motive for putting this in the film is that in today's world that people are more cynical at the media than ever before. Like I said in the beginning, DotD needs multiple viewings before I can write off this film, but hell, I just love that Romero is continuing to do dead films.

[Barmy]

DotD is Romero's way of telling us that we are no longer reliant on traditional media.

Welcome to 5+ years ago. Blair Witch Project told us that like eons ago

[maxbelmont]

DotD is Romero's way of telling us that we are no longer reliant on traditional media.

Welcome to 5+ years ago. Blair Witch Project told us that like eons ago

True Barmy, even 5+ years ago, everyone still relied on traditional forms of media to get their news. The point I was getting at was that the "YouTube" way of using it as a media outlet has only been around for three years.

[Barmy]

The point I'm making is that 5+ years ago it MIGHT have been interesting to say OMG those darn kids these days film everything!!! 11 In fact, someone did--the Blair Witch dudes. But Diary seems horrifically dated and OBVIOUS, and is patently the work of an old and out of touch individual. And even the term "traditional media" seems dated.

[Cold Bishop]

I thought all Blair Witch told us was that people will swallow up gimmicks.

I have not seen this film, as Land of the Dead made me want to avoid Romero Zombie films in the future, but surely it can't be worst than Blair Witch.

[Barmy]

I think Blair Witch told us that when people are about to get killed, they will keep filming what is happening to them, and that, when someone is about to kill you and you drop the camera, the camera will fall such that it will continue to film the action. Diary is a carbon copy of this.