Diary of the Dead is about zombies. I realize that reviews which reveal big secrets about movies are in poor taste, but I feel that it is my obligation to warn any potential viewers. For those who don’t know, zombies are the reanimated corpses of the dead who now devour the living. The idea of centering a coming-of-age story about a student filmmaker around some sort of “zombie apocalypse” is a brave one, and the director, George Romero deserves a lot of credit for blazing a new trail. This film is unlike any I’ve ever seen before, and it in no way relies heavily on plot devices and tropes which have been used dozens of times in movies lately.

The plot, at first glance, is simple: Annoying Filmmaker shows us the world as seen through his camera. He finds his girlfriend, 30 Year Old College Student amidst the chaos of some sort of catastrophe. Fearing for their families, they decide to take an RV on a road trip to make sure that their parents and siblings haven’t been eaten by the dead. The casting is perfect, and the motley crew assembled for this spiritual journey is made up of original characters with complex emotions. Italian Mike is a fiery skeptic who doesn’t take any guff. Fuhgettaboudit! Professor English is a wry drunk from the UK who has a dim view of humanity. Don’t Mess With Texas is a buxom, vacuous blonde dating Senso-Flex, a burly hunk unafraid to show his feelings. Glasses is an intellectual pipsqueak who can fix the TV! St. Chistopher is a mousy girl, religious and unhinged.

George Romero’s greatest strength, it seems, is in character development. Rather than subtly show us what each person in the RV is all about, he simply inserts lines of dialogue or overt traits which help us to instantly identify their spirit. Who wants to think at the movies!? Professor English is barely in a single scene which doesn’t show him sipping from a flask, so guess what: he’s a drunk! Italian Mike, besides always telling us that he don’t believe in no zombies, scowls a lot and talks about how he misses Jersey! St. Christopher loves her St. Christopher medal and caresses it when things start to get a bit dodgy!

It took some research to discover this, but apparently Mr. Romero has made zombie movies before! In fact, it appears that he’s something of a pioneer in the field. One would think (and I’m certainly glad that it isn’t the case) that George might easily fall into the trap of changing the atmosphere of his movies to reflect the passage of time. I mean, 40 years have passed since his first movie, with countless films about the undead released in the meantime. However, no character seems to possess any awareness about zombies in popular culture! Therefore, while the audience groans and suspects that so-and-so is about to come back from the dead and eat everybody, the characters are all, like, “Wait, what!? Dead people!? Nuh-huh!”

It’s a refreshing change!

Spoiler alert again! When the film first introduces all the endearing characters (and believe me: you will love them all!), all I could think to myself was, “Jeez. These characters are great! I can’t wait to see where they end up by the end of the film! Hopefully happy!” But the sad (and bitingly original) truth of this film is that a ton of people die! By end, I was all like, “Well, I guess I can use one hand to count the survivors!"

Brave choice, Mr. Romero!

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the filmmaking itself! Every shot is taken from some sort of extant footage. Most is in the form of video from Annoying Filmmaker’s camera, but occasionally it will be different! It’s all woven together with narration from 30 Year Old College Student, so ostensibly: somebody made this movie. Somebody who lived it! At one point, security camera footage was spliced into the reel to show the RV pulling into a parking lot. I was all, “Buh-wuh-puh WHAT!!!??? Good luck explaining this, logic of the movie!” But then Mr. Romero bitch-slapped me back into suspension of disbelief when two characters discussed how to get a hold of that security camera’s footage! At every step, my second-guesses were repudiated. With honors!

It was a bit above my head (Mr. Romero can be subtle when he wants to, apparently), but there’s some subtext in the film which thematically compares shooting with guns and shooting with cameras. I had a hard time following this undercurrent of urbane, sophisticated commentary, but I’m pretty sure that when Professor English told Annoying Filmmaker that “shooting with a camera is no different than shooting with a gun,” he was alluding to this. Also, when Annoying Filmmaker argued with his lady friend 30 Year Old College Student, he said some pretty deep stuff. Again, the subtlety was a bit lost on me, but when he said that, “cameras can be more powerful than guns: they can show people things,” I guessed that it was related.

All in all, I would recommend this film to anyone who hasn’t ever seen a zombie movie. Even if you have seen one (or many!), I doubt that the originality of them could compare to what this movie had to offer. I have a feeling that we’ll be talking about George Romero and his fresh, hip films for years to come. Excelsior!