watching movies one cup at a time

Besides vampires, Zombies are the most overdone horror movie subject. There have been so many zombie flicks in the past 30-40 years, it’s ridiculous. And we pretty much have George Romero to thank for all that. His groundbreaking film Night Of The Living Dead launched the whole modern concept of a zombie in horror films. They existed before his movie, but really only as either victims of voodoo or poisoning in cheap black and white third-rate horror movies. But it was Romero’s film that set in motion the zombie mythology we know all too well today.

Diary Of The Dead is George Romero’s fifth zombie flick. This time it is told from the perspective of a handheld video camera that students in Pittsburgh are using to document the zombie takeover starting from the time of the initial break out. Some are calling it a cross between The Blair Witch and Dawn Of The Dead. Or Cloverfield with Zombies. It is a kind of original idea and tries to incorporate the notion that bloggers are the future of information distribution. But ultimately the film comes off as a copy of a copy. Kind of like when a one-hit wonder band releases a new CD with a re-recording of their one hit in an effort to cash in again.

George Romero is going to beat his zombie concept to death as long as people are willing to spend their money and see it. But unfortunately for George, contemporary horror fans have evolved way past his original zombie type. The idea of a slow-moving, ugly, awkward, mess-of-a-human slowing walking towards you is just not very menacing any more. With movies like 28 Days Later, the new Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Weeks Later and I Am Legend, people want a more intense and dangerous film enemy. They don’t want a creature you can kind of shove out of the way. The zombies in Diary Of The Dead just seemed rather dull.

There is a kind of narration going on with one of characters describing the film within a film and more often than not it comes off as very pretentious and forced. In fact most of the dialog in this movie is pretentious and forced. It’s not believable. Chalk that up to either a cast of unknowns or a bad script.

George, it’s time to hang up the zombies. We simply don’t need yet another version of what you established in 1968 and have done little to change since.