I went to see this movie with great anticipation. After all, George Romero practically single-handedly created the American zombie movie genre by himself, with such classics as "Night of the Living Dead," with its brilliant commentary on racism, and "Dawn of the Dead," with its insightful satire of consumer culture. And of course, highfalutin cultural criticism aside, both of those films were balls-to-the-wall, kick-ass horror films in their own right. But with this latest installment in the "Dead" series, Romero seems to have forgotten how to make an engaging -- much less competently made -- horror movie. It's hard to see your cinema heroes fall, and Romero falls long and hard to a special purgatory reserved for film-school rejects who create self-indulgent amateur garbage. Every element of this movie is embarrassingly awful: the dunderheadedly clunky dialogue comes off like a third-grade Thanksgiving pageant; the acting is as broad and stupid as that of wanna-be thespians from a small town community theater performing in the local YMCA; the characters are stereotypes straight out of a 70's era TV show (even "Welcome Back, Kotter" had more complex characters); the editing is a constant annoyance that repeatedly calls attention to itself. More on the editing: Romero really (even desperately) wants us to know that he's intentionally making jump cuts by putting in a purple flash-frame overlaid with a "bleep" on the soundtrack every time he does so -- as if we've never seen a jump-cut before, and he doesn't want to startle us with this Radical New Editing Technique. And he clearly has no understanding of how current video camera technology looks or feels; or he imagines that his audience, who by now have suckled at the teat of Internet video for years, have no idea exactly what it looks like. Video supposedly uploaded to YouTube looks pristine, as if it was never compressed by their Flash codec that creates occasional blocky video artifacts. Yet any time we see footage taken from a source like a surveillance camera, not only is it also too clean, it has cartoonish video glitches in it of the kind you never see on actual surveillance footage. Romero's take on video technology is like the bad 80's TV version of what the film industry believes the average person thinks video is supposed to look like; in addition to YouTube, we've all seen "Cops" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" by now, and we all KNOW that REAL video looks nothing like what Romero shows us, and it's condescending that he thinks we won't notice. The film also couldn't decide whether it wanted to be serious capital-H Horror or a comedy, and failed miserably at both. It manages to suck all tension, drama, and fear out of every frame, to the point where you begin to wonder how much worse it could possibly get. Every single element of this movie was so mishandled as to be a distraction, and only served to constantly yank me out of my futile efforts to suspend my disbelief. Even the soundtrack was inappropriate for the realism they were trying to achieve, a fact even the filmmakers seemed to understand, since they felt obligated have one of the characters justify the use of the feeble soundtrack in voice-over. Speaking of the voice-over, I wanted to strangle the narrator every time she spoke, with her whiny-assed, lamely expository take on the events and her feelings about them. The movie's constant but laughable "Blair Witch" rip-off continually reminds you of how that groundbreaking film was so much better at the art of the faux documentary. I also found myself longing to see "Cloverfield" again to enjoy true technical mastery combined with an understanding of how hand-held video should be simulated to maintain the illusion of being real. What a tragic waste of 95 minutes of your life. Retire now while we still have some fond memories of your previous work, George.
Review of Diary of the Dead
