Diary of the Dead

Director: George A. Romero
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 1.0

Another zombie invasion, another approach to the zombie invasion, and by that I mean 'aesthetically' - oh, they can still lurch about and be killed by bullets to the brain, but this Romero picture is really about Filmmaking and Journalism in the Era of YouTube, LiveJournal and Blogger. The love/hate relationship with technology is apparent - it's an addiction, he asserts, but it's also a valid tool to convey information in an unorthodox manner - although the ideas behind Romero's picture, in this case, are remarkably better than the picture itself. The acting is atrocious, the script is atrocious and the hand-held faux-documentary approach leads to the characters performing actions that betray basic human psychology (the actors cling to the cameras when instinct says drop them - I understand the purpose, but if a monster is chewing on me the first thing I think about is getting it off me, not reaching for a recording device; also, when a friend gets hit in the face by sniper fire, the rest of the crew just … loiter, instead of running like hell). 72,000 hits in 8 minutes? That's more than the dancing hamster! Or the teenage girls dancing!