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seriousficI think sometime before he actually did, the notion that George Romero would follow up Day of the Dead with three new zombie movies would've been exciting? Sadly, the man has really, really lost his talent for social satire. And really, all he did in the first place was put zombies in a mall. He lost that.
I mean, honestly. It must be sad when Simon Pegg and Ed Frost, the guys who wrote you a love letter in Shaun of the Dead, do a better job with a parody than George Romero does with a full-blown fourth movie. Really, does anyone think Land of the Dead's tepid jabs at Bush hold a candle to Shaun's hardcore riffing on modern society?
But anyway, onto thesavaging review...
Diary of the Dead
It's easy to see why "found footage" movies are so popular. After all, where else can audiences see the cameras shake a whole hell of a lot? Well, here comes George Romero to examine the America's Funniest Home Videos phenom, just ten years after Bob Sagat left the show.
It does make sense. After all, The Blair Witch Project was found footage with witches, Cloverfield was found footage with kaiju, Rec was found footage with zombies, so it only makes sense to do found footage with zombies again. But the appeal of found footage is that there's an automatic sense of cinema verite, of verisimilitude. After all, we all know what home videos look like, so by making a movie look like a home video of zombies attacking, it's like it's really happening, man! So long as you watch your home videos in a theater with popcorn and teenage girls chatting about how lame this movie is compared to Prom Night.
George Romero doesn't get this. I mean, he really doesn't get it. Diary of the Dead, which has the premise that it's the events of Night of the Living Dead retold (only, not forty years ago) from the perspective of footage in a video camera. Okay. Romero goes on to add voiceover narration, montages, and a soundtrack to the movie. You know, just like in a news report. He justifies this by a wince-inducing prologue where the heroine explains that she's edited the movie together and added music cues (again, WTF?) to make it scary, because it's supposed to scare you, so you don't make the same mistakes the characters did. Almost like it's some sort of... zombie survival guide. Great idea for a book, that.
I should note, that of the "scary music" the narrator added to scare us, some of it is LOUD NOISES that play during fake scares and once, after a Texan character kills a zombie and says "Don't mess with Texas" (as we do), the soundtrack plays dixie music. So, you added music to scare us, and for comedic effect. Hey, just because it's an important documentary about the zombie menace, doesn't mean it can't have a few belly laffs!
Then you get to the movie and believe me, The Yellow Rose of Texas is the most authentic thing about the movie. It starts off with the characters filming a meta-tastic horror film about a mummy (it's a shame, because zombies are so played out that you wish Romero was savvy enough to have the characters in a zombie movie, filming a zombie movie). But the characters' griping about fast zombies comes off less as playful irony than it does a crotchety old man telling them no-good hooligans to get off his yard. Sorry, George, but 28 Days Later was superior to Day of the Dead in every respect.
Then it gets into the movie, and the only thing surprising about the story is how predictable it is. The gang runs into some black revolutionaries who see the zombie apocalypse as a chance to start over without the Man (they're nice), some rogue National Guard units (they're mean), and the idle rich (they're idle). Through it all, the characters are completely overwrought and unbelievable. At one point, a character sees a horrifically burned policeman zombie and quips "I don't think he wants our license and registration!" Really, who in the real world would react that way to the walking dead? Later, the oldest character shoots a zombie, then muses about man's inhumanity to man and how warfare is all about dehumanizing the enemy and how ironic it was that he won a red badge of courage and it's all quiet on the western front. Which, you shot a zombie. They're the living dead, shambling about, hungry for brains. They're kinda already dehumanized!
And so on in that vein for two hours. All the found footage gimmick really does is give an excuse for the characters to literally turn to the camera and talk to the audience, and believe me, none of them are Ferris Bueller. As if that isn't enough, every so often the heroine throws in some stock footage and blabs on even more about, you guessed it, man's inhumanity to man. This reaches its nadir at the end, which is lifted whole-sale from Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead. How creatively bankrupt are you when you're not just plagiarizing yourself, but you're plagiarizing remakes of yourself?
The movie's theme is asking why anyone would stand around and point a camera at someone getting attacked by zombies instead of helping, but it never makes us believe anyone would do that. It's a bunch of sound and fury, signifying "you kids today with your YouTube and your Funny or Die videos and your cat macros..."
Every so often Romero has mercy on the audience and livens things up with a zombie kill, but they all look pretty CGI-y. At one point, a character grabs a bottle of acid that just happens to be lying around and pelts a zombie with it. Later, a characters finds a family member zombified (as you will) and the tragedy doesn't really hit home because, one, the characters literally stand around and tape her being attacked by a zombie for five minutes (even the ones who aren't working a camera), then someone shoots the zombie with an arrow, lifting it up and pinning it to a wall. Wow, nice shot, Conan. Then the movie pans over to show it was the elderly professor. I've heard seniors are leading more active lifestyles, but this is ridiculous!
I should also note that just to completely fumble the conventions of the found footage genre even more, there are countless scenes where two characters point cameras at each other and have a chat, so we don't miss a minute of the "acting." It looks exactly as stupid as it sounds. The whole thing is just more trouble than it's worth. At one point, there's security camera footage of the characters' RV parking, one shot, and then the movie spends five minutes showing the characters hacking the network to get that footage, then editing it into the movie. It's almost as funny as when the guys in Spaceballs fast-forwarded through Spaceballs.
The movie only comes up with one good idea, which is that the characters are posting their "movie" to the Net and getting big hits. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to shoot this conventionally, but with home movies at appropriate intervals. Have the characters interviewed by the camera, document the hordes of zombies, clown around with goofy zombie kills. "I found this bottle of acid and I swear to God, I'm gonna use it on a zombie!"
But then, someone's probably already done that on Youtube.
I mean, honestly. It must be sad when Simon Pegg and Ed Frost, the guys who wrote you a love letter in Shaun of the Dead, do a better job with a parody than George Romero does with a full-blown fourth movie. Really, does anyone think Land of the Dead's tepid jabs at Bush hold a candle to Shaun's hardcore riffing on modern society?
But anyway, onto the
Diary of the Dead
It's easy to see why "found footage" movies are so popular. After all, where else can audiences see the cameras shake a whole hell of a lot? Well, here comes George Romero to examine the America's Funniest Home Videos phenom, just ten years after Bob Sagat left the show.
It does make sense. After all, The Blair Witch Project was found footage with witches, Cloverfield was found footage with kaiju, Rec was found footage with zombies, so it only makes sense to do found footage with zombies again. But the appeal of found footage is that there's an automatic sense of cinema verite, of verisimilitude. After all, we all know what home videos look like, so by making a movie look like a home video of zombies attacking, it's like it's really happening, man! So long as you watch your home videos in a theater with popcorn and teenage girls chatting about how lame this movie is compared to Prom Night.
George Romero doesn't get this. I mean, he really doesn't get it. Diary of the Dead, which has the premise that it's the events of Night of the Living Dead retold (only, not forty years ago) from the perspective of footage in a video camera. Okay. Romero goes on to add voiceover narration, montages, and a soundtrack to the movie. You know, just like in a news report. He justifies this by a wince-inducing prologue where the heroine explains that she's edited the movie together and added music cues (again, WTF?) to make it scary, because it's supposed to scare you, so you don't make the same mistakes the characters did. Almost like it's some sort of... zombie survival guide. Great idea for a book, that.
I should note, that of the "scary music" the narrator added to scare us, some of it is LOUD NOISES that play during fake scares and once, after a Texan character kills a zombie and says "Don't mess with Texas" (as we do), the soundtrack plays dixie music. So, you added music to scare us, and for comedic effect. Hey, just because it's an important documentary about the zombie menace, doesn't mean it can't have a few belly laffs!
Then you get to the movie and believe me, The Yellow Rose of Texas is the most authentic thing about the movie. It starts off with the characters filming a meta-tastic horror film about a mummy (it's a shame, because zombies are so played out that you wish Romero was savvy enough to have the characters in a zombie movie, filming a zombie movie). But the characters' griping about fast zombies comes off less as playful irony than it does a crotchety old man telling them no-good hooligans to get off his yard. Sorry, George, but 28 Days Later was superior to Day of the Dead in every respect.
Then it gets into the movie, and the only thing surprising about the story is how predictable it is. The gang runs into some black revolutionaries who see the zombie apocalypse as a chance to start over without the Man (they're nice), some rogue National Guard units (they're mean), and the idle rich (they're idle). Through it all, the characters are completely overwrought and unbelievable. At one point, a character sees a horrifically burned policeman zombie and quips "I don't think he wants our license and registration!" Really, who in the real world would react that way to the walking dead? Later, the oldest character shoots a zombie, then muses about man's inhumanity to man and how warfare is all about dehumanizing the enemy and how ironic it was that he won a red badge of courage and it's all quiet on the western front. Which, you shot a zombie. They're the living dead, shambling about, hungry for brains. They're kinda already dehumanized!
And so on in that vein for two hours. All the found footage gimmick really does is give an excuse for the characters to literally turn to the camera and talk to the audience, and believe me, none of them are Ferris Bueller. As if that isn't enough, every so often the heroine throws in some stock footage and blabs on even more about, you guessed it, man's inhumanity to man. This reaches its nadir at the end, which is lifted whole-sale from Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead. How creatively bankrupt are you when you're not just plagiarizing yourself, but you're plagiarizing remakes of yourself?
The movie's theme is asking why anyone would stand around and point a camera at someone getting attacked by zombies instead of helping, but it never makes us believe anyone would do that. It's a bunch of sound and fury, signifying "you kids today with your YouTube and your Funny or Die videos and your cat macros..."
Every so often Romero has mercy on the audience and livens things up with a zombie kill, but they all look pretty CGI-y. At one point, a character grabs a bottle of acid that just happens to be lying around and pelts a zombie with it. Later, a characters finds a family member zombified (as you will) and the tragedy doesn't really hit home because, one, the characters literally stand around and tape her being attacked by a zombie for five minutes (even the ones who aren't working a camera), then someone shoots the zombie with an arrow, lifting it up and pinning it to a wall. Wow, nice shot, Conan. Then the movie pans over to show it was the elderly professor. I've heard seniors are leading more active lifestyles, but this is ridiculous!
I should also note that just to completely fumble the conventions of the found footage genre even more, there are countless scenes where two characters point cameras at each other and have a chat, so we don't miss a minute of the "acting." It looks exactly as stupid as it sounds. The whole thing is just more trouble than it's worth. At one point, there's security camera footage of the characters' RV parking, one shot, and then the movie spends five minutes showing the characters hacking the network to get that footage, then editing it into the movie. It's almost as funny as when the guys in Spaceballs fast-forwarded through Spaceballs.
The movie only comes up with one good idea, which is that the characters are posting their "movie" to the Net and getting big hits. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to shoot this conventionally, but with home movies at appropriate intervals. Have the characters interviewed by the camera, document the hordes of zombies, clown around with goofy zombie kills. "I found this bottle of acid and I swear to God, I'm gonna use it on a zombie!"
But then, someone's probably already done that on Youtube.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 06:47 pm (UTC)The_Lurker
Date: 2009-10-10 08:13 am (UTC)My dear WCHT ( White Cat Head Thingy ) you seam to lack the basic knowledge of the ZOMBIEPHYSIOLOGYtm. Bad Puns can halt a Zombie in his...her...it's tracks. Their rotting brains can't comprehend the lameness of the jokes. That cause a short-circuit to their motor functions.
Next i will teach you how to make a Zombie's head explode using well placed Irony. LOL
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 10:11 pm (UTC)I actually thought this was the best part of the movie and would have rather watched a movie about them (and the irony that some of those most prepared for a zombie apocalypse are a bunch of gang bangers) than *another* movie about a bunch of dumb ass college students.
George Romero doesn't get this. I mean, he really doesn't get it.
Yeah, there's definitely that element that Romero's out of touch with the times. Even his episode of 'Masters of Horror' had that whole 'man, this would have been awesome.. BACK IN 1985!!' feel to it. Which is a shame because he's still one of my favorite directors.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 10:46 pm (UTC)You could say that about anyone. A daycare center, the crew of an airliner, Megan Fox... Although I think a movie about gangbangers versus zombies would be hard-pressed to avoid the kind of heavy-handed "irony" that you got in The Day After Tomorrow, where Americans are fleeing into Mexico to escape an ice age and it's like immigration or something. There's not many filmmakers I would trust with that premise.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 05:24 am (UTC)I Can Do Brains All By Myself
Date: 2009-10-11 01:21 pm (UTC)followed a trail from fanficrants to here
Date: 2009-10-13 07:12 pm (UTC)28 days later was _so_ superior to Day of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead was great, Day of the Dead was okay and interesting, but that Diary of the Dead thing? Oh no.
I tried to watch it (I like to have some background entertainment washing over me when working out) and okay, so the beginning with the horror film was a useable idea horribly executed. I agree, there could have been some irony in it, but nada. But hey, might get better.
No it didn't. Another 10 minutes of purposely badly shot footage of teenies/young adults being as Hollywood-clichéd as humanly possible and I gave up on it.
I don't know, does it help to be 22 and (whatever Romero thinks)of as) a tpyical young student? Because I could have stood the bad optics & sounds but the characters? Not a chance. If after the first twenty minutes a zombie had eaten all of them I wouldn't have felt a twinge of sorrow over it. In contrast: I was sorry for pretty much any character who died in Dawn of the Dead.