George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

I've always been surprised that this movie just doesn't get the praise that it deserves. I think it's absolutely brilliant. Feels like Romero's true return to his signature form in wonderfully matching blood and guts with a relevant message. I can agree that a lot of the acting is bad, the characters are rather paper thin and a lot of the CGI looks like poop. But the it's the way that Romero goes about expressing his media-meddling political statements

It seems like a lot of people complain about the found footage aspect of the film, which I personally thought was genius, and probably the best hand-cam flicks I've seen actually. One of my biggest problems with a lot of these found footage flicks is their reasoning for the constant filming and the believability of the situations. There are times that you have the characters having these long, deep conversations are you have to stop and wonder "Wait, why the hell would they be filming this anyway?

But the way Romero goes about it, the "shaky cam" element to the film works as the prominent point of the message of the movie. The main character insists that everything that happens is filmed so that he can expose the truth about the outbreak, counter-acting the media's deception by giving out the wrong information. It's imperative that the camera keeps rolling, and it makes sense.

And it also speaks a lot about the ugliness of humanity and our deviously voyeuristic tendencies. You see it all the time, every day. Stuck in traffic just because everyone is creeping slowly by the car accident, scoping the scene to find a mangled body. The kid who stand back and records a bully beating some kid up instead of stopping it. And even ourselves, who sit there and watch people mutilated by rabid cannibals.

It's the responsibilities and humanity that we sometimes lose track of or abandon all together just to make sure that we got it on camera that Romero satires here, and presents it wittingly. And the zombie action is also a treat, besides the shitty CG. Absolutely loved the defibrillator death, and that has to be the coolest acid death I've ever seen.

My only real problem with this movie is how the movie is edited. It makes sense, because we're essentially watching a film of a film. But I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't like how the chick put the final product together.

Her often pointless narration, the playbacks of previous scenes, stuff like that. And I didn't like it when the multiple cameras came into play, because at that point it lost its found footage feel and was cut to the point where it began to lose what made it so unique.

BOTTOM LINE: I loved it. Romero delivers a cleverly written blood bath that fits perfectly into his zombie saga that I find to be criminally underrated in its brilliance and execution. Maybe it's just the found footage thing people don't like, but I thought the first-person POV offered a terrifying experience and was utilized perfectly with the film's overall message. I think it's a true gem of horror and I highly recommend it.