| Diary of the Dead | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | George A. Romero |
| Produced by | George A. Romero Peter Grunwald Sam Englebardt Artur Spigel Dan Fireman John Harrison Ara Katz |
| Written by | George A. Romero |
| Starring | Shawn Roberts Joshua Close Michelle Morgan Joe Dinicol |
| Music by | Norman Orenstein |
| Cinematography | Adam Swica |
| Editing by | Michael Doherty |
| Studio | Artfire Films Romero-Grunwald Productions |
| Distributed by | The Weinstein Company |
| Release date(s) | February 15, 2008 (limited) |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2,000,000[1] |
| Box office | $5,364,858[2] |
Diary of the Dead (also known as George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead) is a 2007 American/Canadian horror film by George A. Romero. Although independently produced, it was distributed theatrically by Dimension Films and was released in cinemas on February 15, 2008[3] and on DVD by The Weinstein Company and Genius Entertainment on May 20, 2008.
Diary of the Dead is the fifth film in Romero's highly acclaimed Dead series of zombie films. It is not a direct sequel to previous films in the series, instead being "a rejigging of the myth" according to Romero.[3]
Diary of the Dead follows a band of people making a horror film at the time of the first outbreak who decide to record the epidemic incident documentary-style and end up themselves being chased down by zombies.
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A group of young film studies students from the University of Pittsburgh are in the woods making their own horror film along with their faculty advisor, Andrew Maxwell, when they hear on the radio the news of apparent mass-rioting and mass murder. Soon, these reports include cannibalism and the fact that the recently deceased are inexplicably waking and walking. Two of the students, Ridley and Francine, decide to leave the group, while project director Jason, who wants to film the events documentary-style, heads to the dormitory of his girlfriend Debra Moynahan. When she cannot contact her family, they travel in an RV to the house of Debra's parents in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
On the way, the driver, Mary, sees a car accident and runs over a highway patrolman and three other zombies trying to escape from them. The group stops and, after running over an undead state trooper, Mary shoots herself in the head with a pistol. Her friends take her to a hospital, where they find the dead are returning to life as zombies, and they need to fight to survive while traveling to Debra's parents' house. Mary turns into a zombie and attacks the group, but Maxwell shoots her dead. On their way out, one of the students, Gordo, is bitten by a zombie. After Gordo dies, his girlfriend Tracy begs the group not to shoot him immediately; she is ultimately forced to shoot him herself when he comes back as a zombie.
They are sidelined when the fuel line of the RV breaks, but they are assisted by a deaf Amish man named Samuel. The barn they are hiding in is surrounded by zombies whom Samuel fights off as Tracy repairs the RV. Just before escaping, Samuel is bitten and takes his own life by stabbing himself with a scythe through his head, also taking out the zombie who bit him.
They later pass a city and are stopped by an armed gang. They try to barter with the men, who are better armed and supplied. The men are survivors of the attack on their city; everyone else left. The leader is a member of the National Guard, and does not believe the military will help. They rest in the city for a while, and edit their videos. There is a small argument between Jason and Debra, who thinks surviving the catastrophe is more important than documenting it. Jason sees the recordings as a necessity to show the world what was really happening. They also find out that Debra's family were camping for the extent of the crisis, and is just now on their way home.
The National Guard survivors gear up after one of their members has a heart attack, dies, then goes missing. They mistakenly kill one of their own and then chase the zombie into the fuel supply area, killing it with a canister of hydrochloric acid. The students resupply and leave for Debra's house. They get a video stream from Tokyo from a survivor until they lose signal. The only dependable source of information is now the internet, added by bloggers.
When they arrive at Debra's house, they find the reanimated corpses of her mother and brother, whom they fight off. They escape the house and decide to travel back to Ridley's mansion, but are stopped by different National Guardsmen, who rob them, leaving them only their weapons. They arrive at Ridley's mansion and find it abandoned. A bookcase in the mansion opens to reveal a panic room where a shell-shocked Ridley stumbles out. He brings the group on a grand tour and then explains that his father was the first to turn, then his mother and then the servants and that Francine was attacked by his butler. He invites Debra and Tony to follow him outside to where he buried his family and the servants. It turns out that he did not bury them, but just dumped them into the pool.
Ridley locks the two in the pool room and runs away to the house where he transforms and begins to hunt the group. Maxwell hears the commotion and runs into the panic room with the shotgun. Ridley attacks Tracy and Jason at the RV, before Jason distracts Ridley long enough for Tracy to knock him out. She then runs to the RV and drives away, angry at Jason for filming rather than helping. Ridley travels back to the house and pushes Eliot into a bathtub, where he is electrocuted.
The survivors go back to the panic room for a while, but Ridley returns and infects Jason. Maxwell stabs Ridley in the head with a sword, and Debra shoots Jason. Debra watches the video on Jason's camera and sees his last message, about his happiness to be documenting the events, apparently filmed right before his attack. Debra decides to continue the video.
In the morning they awake to see the zombies who were in the pool have made their way out and were breaking into the mansion. Maxwell, Debra, and Tony lock themselves in the panic room. Inside, Debra watches the last thing Jason downloaded: A hunting party shooting zombies of people they previously left tied to trees, leaving them to die and reanimate and using them as shooting targets. After seeing this, Debra wonders whether the human race is worth saving.
Quentin Tarantino, Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg, and Stephen King lend their voices as newscasters on the radio.[6] Shawn Roberts also appeared in Land of the Dead, making him the tenth actor to appear in at least two of Romero's zombie films, after Simon Pegg, Joseph Pilato, Tom Savini, Gregory Nicotero, Boyd Banks, John Amplas, Alan van Sprang, Taso N. Stavrakis and Romero himself. Of the aforementioned ten, Romero and Nicotero have made appearances in three films, with Alan van Sprang set to join them upon the release of the next installment, Survival of the Dead, reprising his role.
The film is the fifth film in Romero's Dead series[7] and there are some notable references to earlier Romero films. One example of this is that the same news track from 1968's Night of the Living Dead is used in the scene where the cast is in Ben's garage.
However, the film is not a direct sequel to any of Romero's films: the film is "a rejigging of the myth" says Romero,[3] and is meant as a side story during the same timeframe as Night of the Living Dead. Even though the fourth film, Land of the Dead (2005), was studio-produced through Universal Studios, Diary of the Dead was produced by Romero-Grunwald Productions, formed by Romero and his producer friend Peter Grunwald, with Artfire Films.[8]
Romero announced the film in August 2006 after signing a deal to write and direct it.[8] Filming began its four-week shoot in Toronto on October 19, 2006.[4]
Despite the low production budget, somewhere around $2 million,[9] Romero made extensive use of computer-generated imagery because it allowed him to shoot the film quickly and add the effects later. Also, the film's style, as if shot with hand-held cameras, necessitated a shift from his usual method of working, which involves filming multiple camera angles and assembling scenes in the editing room. Instead, Romero filmed much of the action in long, continuous takes: "The camera was 360, so everybody was an acrobat, ducking under the lens when the camera came past you," said Romero. "The cast was great. They had a lot of theater experience. I think they could have gone from scene one all the way to the end of the movie, all in a single shot."[10]
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Midnight Madness on September 8, 2007.[11] According to a poll taken by the Toronto Star, it was one of the most anticipated films at the Festival.[12] Just four days later, The Weinstein Company announced that it had purchased the rights to distribute Diary of the Dead in the United States and Mexico for $2.5 million. There, Dimension Films are distributing the film.
The DVD was released by The Weinstein Company and Genius Entertainment on May 20, 2008. Special features include a feature-length documentary, an audio commentary, deleted scenes, Behind the Scenes featurette, and five short films that came about via a MySpace contest. It was released the same day as a new authorized edition of Night of the Living Dead on DVD was released by The Weinstein Company.[13]
The film was released on Region 2 on June 29, 2008, in single disc,[14] double disc and Blu-ray editions.[15] The double-disc and Blu-ray both contained a UK exclusive interview from Frightfest 08, and a feature length documentary entitled One for the Fire - The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The double-disc edition was released in limited, numbered steelbook packaging, and online retailer play.com sold an exclusive edition in a slipcase.[16] On October 21, 2008, a Blu-ray version was released in the United States.
George Romero won a 2008 Critics Award for Diary of the Dead. The film received mixed reviews, with a slight majority being positive. Most reviewers acknowledged that Romero is still the master of the genre, and that the film was as enjoyable as Romero's previous entries in the pentalogy, and that it also retained Romero's social commentary, including American's newfound reliance on the media for information and community.[17] The film currently has a "fresh" rating of 62% on Rotten Tomatoes.[18]
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