DIARY OF THE DEAD

We watched this the fifth installment of the Romero DEAD movies last night. If you haven't seen it, this one is told through the eyes of a student filmmaker who decides to document what happens when the dead begin to walk again. It also includes footage from YouTube, cell phone cameras, security cameras etc. Sometimes the commentary on our oversaturated media culture was a bit heavy-handed, but it's a zombie story, so heavy-handed is okay. And the gore bordered on the overly cheesy at times. But as a vision of the end of the world and as a horror movie, it works. It was appropriately scary and a lot of fun. One of Romero's trademarks is to have newscasters presenting some portion of the exposition in the background of the movie, so isn't this a logical extension of that? When disaster struck in 1968--the year NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD--came out, where did people turn? TVs and radios. If disaster struck today, where would we go. TV, yes, but also the internet. And we'd all be shooting footage even as the world ended around us.

One interesting note...the other four movies all showed a progression in the behavior of the zombies. They went from shambling creatures (NIGHT), to somewhat organized shambling creatures with some collective memory (DAWN), to creatures who could be studied and show some intelligence (DAY), to creatures who could really organize (LAND). But the progress appeared to stop here. They were pretty much back to shambling. Maybe Romero is saying that the media culture turns us all backwards? Or maybe they're planning something for the future?