BREAKING NEWS!
Hi everyone, Nina here. We've had a lot of zombie news in recent days, and today is no different. Below is an EXCLUSIVE preview piece where Leather Lass and Jenny From Canada double-team George A. Romero's upcoming Diary of the Dead script. Now before you go jumping ahead to feed your insatiable appetite for all things zombie, be forewarned... there be SPOILERS ahead.
Having said that, read on, Big Daddy!
LL: Leather Lass here with my thoughts on George Romero’s newest venture in the world of zombies, Diary of the Dead [with comments from Jenny From Canada!]. I just couldn’t do this one alone to be honest. I love horror movies, but I have never been one of the Cult of Romero. Other than the first movie, Night of the Living Dead, I have been rather bored with these zombie films. At the risk of alienating our readers, I actually found the remake of Dawn of the Dead to be a much more interesting and exciting film than the original. And don’t even get me started on Day of the Dead. That movie made my logic hurt.
Not that Romero isn’t trying, though. At heart these zombie movies are trying to convey some relatively complicated social analytics, and that isn’t the easiest thing to do when the kids want lots of gore and neck munching. Romero’s zombie films have some really bad tendencies though. The chief problem I have found is that while the ideas are grand in their own right, the dialog to support them is almost universally cornball, and matters are not improved by the fact that Romero has a weakness for casting poor actors.
So why am I reviewing his latest entry into the Dead franchise? Well, I actually enjoyed Land of the Dead a lot more than I ever thought I would. Land has some terrible problems. It’s a heavy handed movie with a plot that doesn’t quite sit well with me, but the big difference between Land and Dawn or Day is that he staffed the film with a group of talented actors who had charisma and took the material seriously enough to keep me engaged. Suddenly, Romero didn’t seem like a one trick pony to me, and when I found out about Diary of the Dead and its high concept plot, I couldn’t resist getting my hands on the script and sharing my feelings about it with you.
JFC: Jenny here. I’m not going to bore you with details on why Lass sucks and is wrong on all her points. She knows she’s wrong, and I’m only saying that because she’s on the opposite side of the continent so she can’t hurt me.
LL: The premise behind Diary is simple really. The entire movie is told from the point of view of different cameras the characters encounter along their adventure. Most of the footage is obtained through the main character’s camera. He’s a young filmmaker trying to make a low budget movie when the world begins to change. Since all of the main characters are either college students or one plucky professor, they decide to stick together in order to get home to their families during this terrible crisis.
JFC: It’s such an awesome premise.
LL: The movie doesn’t initially start off with those we would follow throughout the rest of the story. Instead Romero, who penned the screenplay, offers up a prelude featuring the exact moments when Hell arrives on Earth. A young reporter is with her camera man covering a murder-suicide involving a family in some inner city neighborhood, and the reporter encourages the camera man to obtain footage of the bodies being escorted from their home. Suffice to say, we soon find out that the murder victims are still moving after they were pronounced dead.
The set up is brief, but handled very well. The only glimpses we see are from either the cameraman’s viewpoint, and the scene is blocked in such a way as to maximize the horror and surprise of the situation.
From there we are introduced to the main heroes of the story. Jason is basically the eyes and ears of the film. When we first meet him, he is filming a cheesy scene for his Mummy movie. A woman in a skimpy white dress is chased through the woods by a heavily bandaged mummy. Eventually, poor direction and lack of decent make up effects halts the scene, but Jason keeps the camera rolling as we meet the rest of the crew, who all seem to fit into some skimpy level of characterization. Along with the girl in the diaphanous dress, Tracy, we meet Tony, the Brooklyn trash mouth Doubting Thomas of the group. We have Elliot, the presumably geeky sound guy with long hair and glasses. We also meet Jason’s college instructor Maxwell. Romero goes overboard to insure we understand Maxwell is a drunk as he quickly takes a swig from a flask he keeps hidden no less than three times in the course of a page. In short order, we also meet Gordo (no defining characteristics), Ridley (rich twat), and Francine (looks good in overalls? Is that a stereotype?).
Romero takes this moment to comment on zombie movies in general with something I would like to address. When the Mummy character in the movie within the movie moves too quickly, Jason chides him saying, “How many times do I have to tell you? Dead things don’t move fast! You’re a corpse, for chrissake! If you try to run that fast, your ankles are gonna snap off!” This is obviously a backhanded jab at the Dawnremake (or even the stunning 28 Days Later), but I have to bring up something that really irks me about this. If this is Romero’s definitive vision of how zombies would behave, then in Land of the Dead, why do we have a zombie operating a damn jackhammer?!? I hope this petty line gets cut.
JFC: OMG, you missed the point entirely. Yes, he’s knocking the recent “fast moving zombie” craze, but he’s also setting up a key moment later in the film.
LL: All the characters are quickly consumed with news over the radio about the dead returning to life to terrorize the living. Francine and Ridley quickly leave in order to get back to Ridley’s parents’ sprawling estate where they are guaranteed security and supplies, enough to outlast the coming tumult. Jason on the other hand wants to find his girlfriend, Debra, and get the hell out of Dodge. This leads to the group headed out into the harsh new world in their van to try and get Debra back to her parents.
The set up is a sound one for any movie, but events are heightened by the sense that we are not watching paid actors in their roles, but instead real people dealing with an extraordinary situation. The point of view from Jason’s camera does an amazing job of humanizing the characters, and this is only in print! The best part about this script is that, despite the fact that Blair Witch apparently now owns the concept of first person horror, Diary is a totally different type of film.
The movie is basically structured around three set pieces each involving the main characters going into a spooky home and having to deal with the consequences. If it sounds a tad repetitive to you, you’d be right, but I think that might have been the point.
As I mentioned earlier, Romero really tries to hammer away at some secret agenda about social injustice in each of his films. Diary is no different. In this case Romero seems to be tackling the desensitization to violence we are all exposed to because of the preponderance of the media in our lives. And we aren’t just talking about the news and reality shows here. The movie almost seems to follow the structure of a video game. The characters quickly have to adapt to their surroundings, and the repetitive set pieces only reinforce their leveling-up. The group starts out as a group of skeptical naïfs, but they are quickly forced to use their wits and resources in order to survive the new world they live in.
What makes the idea of over-saturation of media interesting here is that the main character becomes obsessive about keeping his camera rolling at all cost. You are left to wonder, is he documenting all of this for altruistic reasons? So people who find it might benefit from his mission? Or perhaps he can’t grasp what is happening right in front of him, and the only way he can be engaged in this reality is by experiencing it through the monitor on his camera.
JFC: I think it’s the latter, personally, and I think it’s brilliant.
LL: The first person perspective here should do a lot to enhance the idea, and I am anxious to see if Romero can pull it off. Since Blair Witch managed to remain an effective and creepy ride without the talent of good acting, I am not going to comment on Romero’s propensity to cast bad actors. As long as the cast isn’t too stiff, things should get interesting. I am especially anxious to see who is cast as the professor, Maxwell. The character gets more interesting and less “one note” as the movie progresses and he actually gets to do some zombie killing in a way we haven’t seen before.
What I do worry about is the blocking of the entire movie. The script is pretty clear about viewpoints and action, but it’s not all on the page, so to speak. I am hopeful that Romero has taken the time to really storyboard this out so that we get a complete picture of what is happening and not just lazy shots of the camera bouncing all over trees like in the Blair Witch.
JFC: I loved it, and I think that it’s going to be a great film… a nice return to low budget horror for Mr. Romero. It’s only going to be that much better for shooting in Canada.
Well, there you have it. We'll be sure to keep you updated on the film as it goes into production. Stay tuned!
