Diary Of The Dead

[poliphilo]

Romero made two- perhaps three- of the greatest horror movies. Night of the Living Dead revived the genre. Dawn of the Dead is a huge, outrageous, deliriously funny masterpiece. Day of the Dead (about which critics differ) is almost unbearably tense. The next entry- Land of the Dead- which saw him working with a proper Hollywood budget and star actors- is a bit of a let down. In the latest in the series- Diary of the Dead- he returns to his gonzo, low-budget roots with a movie that purports to have been stitched together by a bunch of students on the run. He's not ahead of the pack any more- and he's borrowing other people's ideas rather than innovating (Blair Witch got there first) but he's still the master. Diary has the clunk factor that was always a part of the Romero aesthetic- and the preachy voice-over gets to be a pain- but it's nimble, it's scary, it has it moments of great grue- and while it's not on the level of the initial trilogy, it's a worthy afterthought.