[photopress:large_diary.jpg,thumb,alignleft] ‘They won’t stay dead!’
Thus screamed the tagline for George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead way back in 1968, and it would appear to have been on the money as here we are, more than 40 years later, with the world still ending not with a bang, nor for that matter a whimper, but rather with the sound of relentless shuffling, moaning, screaming and chewing.
In terms of ’sequential’ sequels, Romero himself has thus far followed Night… with Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005) and there have been many, many spin-offs, including fully fledged remakes of Night… and Dawn…, none of which truly abysmal, but all of which proved that when it comes to flesh-eating zombies, Romero is still the master.
And so he has (by and large) once again proved with Diary of the Dead – zombies for the Blair Witch/Cloverfield generation. However, he is facing serious competition this time around – Jaume Balagueró’s wonderfully scary ‘news coverage carnage’ [Rec], is a strong contender for best horror flick since Calvaire (2004), and also has the ‘undead’ (albeit of a different ‘clan’) at its core. So, what of George’s hyper-real horrors?
Well, thankfully, this is still one hell of a ride. The plot in a nutshell (or case?) has the stark simplicity of Night… (which is the film that this in fact most resembles in overall effect and ‘End of the World’ gloom) – a group of student filmmakers, led by Jason Creed (Joshua Close) and Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) are working on their own horror film, when, guess what? The real (or reel?) world suddenly turns terrifying, with the group facing an onslaught of the risen recently deceased, who are, (super)naturally, very, very hungry…
It goes without saying that any Romero ‘return to form’ (Land of the Dead was, by and large, an insipid mess compared to the earlier films) nevertheless brings pros and cons – Diary… is obvious in places, bloody stupid in others, yet there is also the profound, the amusing and the downright terrifying to be had here, so what say we suspend our disbelief and enjoy? A POV flesh-eating zombie movie was always on the cards – thank your lucky stars that, in an age still largely dominated by carbon-copy horrors, this is the genuine article. Red, raw and dripping.
95 mins.
But don’t you think that there always comes a point in the POV genre when you begin to ask why they don’t drop the machine and run?
The script always includes a painful snippet of exposition where the camera man explains why ‘he must keep on filming’. I always find that a big hurdle to leap over when it comes to suspending my disbelief.
I know, I know, what should I care if I’ve already committed to the dead coming back to life? But somehow it matters.
Take your point, Chris – does your argument stretch back as far as The Blair Witch Project (1999), d’you think? I seem to remember they got over the ’she must keep on filming’ plot inconsistency with this marvellous moment:
Josh Leonard: I see why you like this video camera so much.
Heather Donahue: You do?
Josh Leonard: It’s not quite reality. It’s like a totally filtered reality. It’s like you can pretend everything’s not quite the way it is.
Subsequent hyper-real POV films have not been so subtle, including, it must be said, Diary of the Dead…
I think The Blair Witch Project just about gets away with it, most likely because the film itself is very subtle right up to the point where they find the house.
By the way, I’ve just watched a film called Stuck (2007) by Stuart Gordon of Re-Animator (1985) fame. It’s a scream from start to finish – tasteless, horrible and very, very funny.
Indeed – I have heard good stuff about Stuck, so that looks like a double-bill of Chris recommendations that I must catch up on, with William Friedkin’s Bug (2006) [check comments] the other half…