REVIEW
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 Diary of the Dead
2008
Certificate: 18 | Runtime: 95 | Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Joshua Close, Amy Lalonde, Megan Park
 
Student film-maker Jason (Close) is trying to make a horror film with his friends, as part of his film class, and things are not going well. However, while his film may be unremarkable, his camera will capture truly momentous events. During the course of filming, a phenomenon occurs the world over. The dead come back to life and rise from their graves. Jason's camera will capture mankind as it seeks to save itself from annihilation at the hands of those thought dead and buried. The resulting footage became the film we now see - The Death of Death.
Sometimes the whole hand-held camera concept can serve a film well, and other times it can hamper it. Diary of the Dead is unusual because it is impacted upon in both ways. The positive aspect of the gimmick is the inevitable eeriness and uncomfortable closeness it can bring to a film like this. Having the undead pop up right in front of a camera lens that seems to jerk out of the way in sheer terror is more disconcerting for two reasons. It literally puts the horror right in our faces, and it emphasises the immediate danger the characters are in. In conventional films of this nature, we are inevitably kept at a distance from the protagonists as they are scared half to death. Here, they are right next to us. It allows for better scares, and provides a more intimate atmosphere of dread.
Romero applies his decidedly dab hand to the scares. He's not one for avoiding gore, and there's plenty of it. But he can also construct a proper jump scare. His scares are not all about loud musical scores and jumpy editing, but rather a built-up sense of tension and proper timing. However, while he is keen to utilise the distinctive features of a hand-held camera, Romero doesn't fully embrace the concept as he should.
Films like Cloverfield (which I loved) and The Blair Witch Project (which I didn't) understand that one of the key things the concept brings is uncertainty. The images we should see are of people whose survival isn't guaranteed. The footage should be raw, badly edited, sometimes unclear and lacking dramatics. Romero makes a problem for himself because he doesn't embrace this side of the technique. The film-within-a-film approach means that Diary of the Dead has music, a (pretentious) voiceover, and just seems too glossy at times. And the fact that it has a narrator pretty much assures the survival of the character providing it. It robs us of the uncertainty.
Romero also seems to be trying to make a point with his film. Much like the recent Untraceable, Diary of the Dead asks questions about the human fascination with death and destruction. For starters, it seems strange for a film-maker who has spent a career spilling blood and guts to question whether we have issues for watching this sort of stuff. But most of all, it gives the film a really artificial edge. For example, when characters are being attacked, it is generally the case that the people with the cameras don't do anything about it. They stand there filming it in an almost voyeuristic trance. Romero probably though this was making his point, but in reality it just looks stupid. One scene, which should be a chilling reminder of an earlier light-hearted moment, is supposed to be compelling and creepy. But it just looks really silly and unnatural. Humans might well drive slowly past accidents, but we don't stand around and film our friends getting ripped to pieces when we could prevent it.
The performances are all fine. Unsurprisingly, there's nothing exceptional going on, but nobody does anything wrong. Out of the main cast, those who stick in the mind are the feisty Lalonde and Scott Wentworth, who plays the group's professor. And they even manage to overcome some of Romero's rather batty character traits. But it's not the sort of film you watch for performances. It's the sort of film you watch for plenty of zombies, loads of scares and the possibility of real excitement. And on that front the film certainly works, despite its rather awkward adoption of the hand-held camera technique.© David Mercier
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