George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead DVD Review

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Title: George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead

Region: One

Genre: Horror

Stars: Michelle Morgan, Josh Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Joe Dinicole, Scott Wentworth, Philip Riccio, Chris Violette, Tatiana Maslany, Megan Park, Boyd Banks, George Buza, and Alan Van Sprang

Writer: George A. Romero

Director: George A. Romero

Feature length: 96 minutes

Extras: Feature Commentary By Writer/Director George A. Romero, Director Of Photography Adam Swica, and Editor Michael Doherty, For The Record Feature Length Documentary On The Film’s Cast, Crew And Creation, The Roots Featurette, The First Week Featurette, Familiar Voices Cameo Outtakes, Character Confessionals, MYSPACE Contest Winners: Five Zombie Films From Filmmaker Fans, Previews

Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hearing Impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles

Packaging: Keep Case

Chapter Stops: 24

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 2006/DVD Release: 2007

Theatrical Distributor: The Weinstein Company

Home Video Distributor: Dimension Extreme Home Entertainment Through Genius Products; LLC

MPAA Rating: R

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera AKA The Brooklyn Critic

George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead elevates the zombie horror subgenre in horror films to it’s most artistic heights since the filmmaker’s 1978 classic Dawn Of The Dead with an epic scope and feel not seen since George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead either. After forty years Romero takes the viewer back to the beginning, the original first night and goes beyond the time frame that would place part of the events of the film occurring at the same time as the original classic Night Of The Living Dead and then takes us a little further depicting up to the beginning of the third day since the dead began to reanimate and with an unquenchable instinct to feed upon the flesh of the living.

In the context of the timeline where the films are supposed to take place, Romero says he wanted to go back to three years before the events of Land Of The Dead when people still were unsure of what was happening and they were still learning the rules that he set up throughout the quintology and counting series he began back in 1968. Those looking for an explanation as to why the dead are returning to life could return to the previous entries where characters speculated whether it was a virus, radiation from a space probe NASA sent to Venus, a divine punishment or supernatural damnation of some sort, but the truth is Romero’s films are not so much about why as much as they are how people react. More often than not the reasons why the zombies gain the upper hand is because people don’t work together for a common good. Human nature dictates that at the end of times as are the case now, people have different things they want to out of life. So it is not surprising that society falls apart so quickly and the plague of zombies climbs exponentially.

There are points in the film that feel almost like something out of the best horror literature or a good graphic novel. A car passes underneath an overpass where a man has hung himself and bumps the body as it passes underneath him and suddenly to body begins to wiggle as we see it from the rearview and hear a voiceover from a number of genre filmmakers and icons who lend their voices in short cameos that include Quentin Tarantino, Wes Craven, Stephen King, Simon Pegg, Guillermo Del Toro, John Harrison, and Tom Savini. One of the original radio broadcasts from Night Of The Living Dead is used in the film too. Greg Nicotero makes a cameo appearance in the film as undead Doctor and George Romero also has a cameo a police chief denying the events the film opens with. Shawn Roberts, who played an ill fated character in George A. Romero’s Land Of The Dead returns for this film as does Alan Van Sprang who could just as easily have been the character of Brubaker before the events in Land Of The Dead since his character is simply referred to as being a National Guard Colonel and Boyd Banks, who appeared as the butcher zombie in Land Of The Dead and also appeared in the 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead as well as the 2000 George Romero film, Bruiser, which is not a zombie film, has a cameo as a guy selling guns, ammo, and other weapons to group members within a warehouse where a group of African Americans are holding up and waiting for the day when they can start a new society with them at the top.

Actually that sequence is one of the highlights of the film along with a small bit where the student filmmakers repair their Winnebago in a barn belonging to a deaf Amish man, who fights off the undead with a scythe and by tossing dynamite literally into groups of them. The other cast members in the film are appropriately cast for this film and include the beautiful Michelle Morgan and Amy Lalonde as well as Actors Josh Close, Joe Dinicole, Philip Riccio, and Scott Wentworth as their mentoring Professor. Jason Creed (Joshua Close) is obsessed with using the world-changing outbreak as a means toward seizing the day as it were to create a truthful documentary amidst conflicting reports over the radio, television, and especially online. Since these are filmmaking students with a professor overseeing their actions and having access to more sophisticated cameras and computer editing tools that frankly did not even exist when The Blair Witch Project was released in the late 1990s, this is not a film of shaky camerawork so those who got motion sickness during theatrical screenings of Cloverfield earlier this year should feel relatively safe though the film is intended to scare you and make you think too, which is something that all of Romero’s “Living Dead” series films have accomplished successfully and part of what makes his work stand above the imitators. By the end of the film we have characters facing the camera at each other so much and in doing so they effectively distance themselves from each other and the carnage around them to a point that after awhile, one might argue the filmmakers in the film are becoming more zombie like than the living dead outdoors.

The film is also peppered with dark humor as well as some inventive zombie kills that involve hydrochloric acid and defibrillator pads for example. The film will at times have the viewer laughing at one moment as then feeling empathy at times even for the living dead, who are not anything like the behaviorally evolved zombies seen in George A. Romero’s Land Of The Dead. The creatures here at times are sort of like stumbling two year olds reaching out into a world that they recognize from their previous life and yet lack the cognitive motor skills to efficiently navigate. However never make the mistake that these creatures can simply be shrugged off lightly because that is part of their power. The more you underestimate the living dead, the more likely you will fall victim to one.

Presented in a matted widescreen aspect ratio that preserves the manner in which the film was presented theatrically for home video users, George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead looks every bit as good as all of The Weinstein Company DVD releases distributed through Genius Products, which in my opinion are among the best looking standard definition discs out there. A well-rounded English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack coupled with English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles are encoded onto the dual layered disc as options too.

Though not quite as interesting as his feature length audio commentaries for his other films like The Crazies as well as all of his “Living Dead “series films available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc among other digital formats, George Romero along with Director Of Photography Adam Swica, and Editor Michael Doherty do deliver an articulate technical commentary for this DVD release. Some of the extra value features on the DVD can be viewed online at the official MY SPACE page and these include the featurettes The First Week (4:20) and The Roots (2:06). There is a collection of audio outtakes featuring the Familiar Voices (5:05) who lend vocal cameos in the film and there is a feature length documentary entitled Master Of The Dead, which is broken up into smaller sections that are detailed as Writer/Director George A. Romero (13:08), Into The Camera (17:05), You Look Dead: Makeup FX (10:58), A New Spin On Death: Visual Effects (19:00) and A World Gone Mad: Photography And Design (20:23). I am a huge admirer of George Romero and his work and I found it very interesting that in college his first experience doing anything remotely related to entertainment was appearing as the character of Leech in Jack Gelber’s Obie Award winning play, The Connection. I studied under Jack Gelber when I was a graduate writing student earning my MFA at Brooklyn College of the City University Of New York and he was my mentor. It made me proud that I had the opportunity to learn from him and made me feel a bigger connection to Mr. Romero, who I interviewed back in 2005 regarding the original DVD release of Land Of The Dead.

Also among the extra value features are character confessionals that can be viewed individually or as one reel (20:28) and the MY SPACE contest winning shorts made up of The Final Day by Paul Del Vecchio (3:02), Deader Living Through Chemistry (3:05), Opening Night Of The Living Dead (3:06), & Teller (3:01), and Run For Your Life (1:43). Trailers for the original 1968 classic George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, which is available now in a 40^th anniversary edition release from The Weinstein Company through Genius Products as well as the films Storm Warning (2:20), Stephen King’s The Mist (2:29) and perhaps one of the most frightening and possibly early David Cronenberg inspired horror trailers I’ve ever seen, Teeth (1:45). After seeing the trailer I shook my head thinking “That’s so wrong” and yet I’d be a liar if I didn’t say, I’m curious about that one.

George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead is available on DVD-Video now at retailers on and offline courtesy of The Weinstein Company and Dimension Extreme through Genius Products.

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