A Sad Day

So, I just finished watching George Romero's Diary of the Dead. I'd heard a lot about this film when it first came out. I remember that the first few reviews that hit the web were stunningly positive. I was psyched. Then, a flood of negative reviews followed and I became a little more guarded concerning what to expect from this film. I had intended to simply rent the picture, not wanting to take a chance on buying it. Well, today I figured, it's a Romero movie, even if it's not very good it should still be better than most of what's out there. Well, as you can probably guess from the title of this post, I was disappointed. I never thought I'd say this, but here it goes. George Romero's new movie is a melodramatic, poorly acted, overly talkative, boring turd pile. There I said it. I want to cry. I have always loved Romero's films, even the not so great entries in his body of work, like Monkey Shines or Bruiser. This however, is indefensibly bad. I almost can't believe it. I'd really rather not write about this anymore as it is incredibly depressing, but I think it's best to focus on my three biggest problems with the film, and not get bogged down in all the little things I hated.

First, I'll start with the acting. It sucks. Bad. If we compare this "found footage" type film to others, we should take a look at the acting in Cloverfield. Even though all the characters in Cloverfield are these well to do rich white people, we still get a good grasp of their characters and there's some likability there because the actors have personality. The actors in this film have no personality whatsoever. Secondly, and one could argue this goes hand in hand with bad acting, is a shitty script. The dialog is putrid, the film seems to have no point whatsoever, and all the characters just seem to be wandering through their parts as their characters wander through a plotless world. One thing many have been harping on is the shitty narration, which only acts to overstate the patently obvious and interrupt any kind of momentum the film has built up. This leads to my biggest problem with the film. This film is so fucking boring! I could forgive it if it still had some thrilling set pieces or interesting moments of some kind. Instead, I found myself sitting there wondering when it was going to end, and why there were so fucking few zombies in this damn zombie film!



As I was thinking about all this while watching the film, it hit me. Maybe Romero is doing this on purpose. Maybe he wants these kids to act badly. Perhaps the whole thing is overly talking and over stated and melodramatic on purpose. There are indeed some funny and self referential moments in the film. There's a very funny sequence with a deaf and dumb Amish farmer, and you also hear someone say something about adding a underlying social commentary to their horror film. So clearly, Romero's having some fun at his own expense here. Does that mean, that this whole thing is simply Romero's deconstruction of the modern horror film, and that what we've been watching all along is a spoof/satire? Well, if that's the case, the film does fair a little better, but I'm hard pressed to believe it. And in either case, the movie just isn't enjoyable, even assuming all its problems are intentional. Sadly, no matter how I try and convince myself to like this film, I can't. And, I can sit here all day and try and force myself to believe that it's a good movie, but it isn't. So, here's hoping this is just a one off mistake, and Romero can pull it out of the bag on his next one. Otherwise, we're witnessing the steady decline of a once great filmmaker. God I hope I'm wrong. Do yourselves a favor. Skip this movie and find a copy of [REC]. You'll thank me for it.


P.S. - One good thing about the DVD purchase is that it features a zombie short film by Teller, of Penn & Teller fame, which is absolutely brilliant. I've posted it below the trailer.

Trailer


& Teller