Diary of the Dead (2007)
★★★½ — Diary of the Dead (2007)
By 2007, George A. Romero had spent the better part of four decades defining, and redefining, what a zombie film could be. Diary of the Dead marked his fifth entry in the Dead series, arriving some three years after Land of the Dead had brought his long-dormant franchise roaring back to multiplexes. Rather than continuing from where that film left off, Romero wound the clock back to the very beginning, setting his story at the moment the dead first rise. The conceit this time around is a found-footage framework: a group of film students out shooting a low-budget horror project find themselves in the middle of an actual apocalypse, and keep the cameras rolling anyway. It is the kind of premise that asks you to accept a fair amount of "why are they still filming this?" logic, though Romero had always been more interested in using horror as a vehicle for social comment than in strict plausibility. Produced through Artfire Films, Romero-Grunwald Productions and Voltage Pictures, the film was shot largely in Canada and came in well outside the studio blockbuster bracket, the sort of lean, independently spirited production Romero had favoured since the early days.
Romero's relationship with the horror genre is, at this point, essentially the whole history of a certain strain of it. From Creepshow through to his later work such as Survival of the Dead, he had consistently used monsters as mirrors, reflecting anxieties about consumerism, militarism, and the media back at the audience. Diary of the Dead turns that lens specifically on the then-emerging culture of user-generated content, online video and the compulsion to document rather than act. YouTube was barely two years old when this film went into production, and the idea that ordinary people might film a disaster rather than flee it was still a relatively fresh, and genuinely unsettling, observation. The film's principal cast, including Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde and Joe Dinicol, were largely fresh or emerging faces, which suits the student-filmmaker premise well enough, even if it brings its own set of risks when the material demands more than the roles initially appear to require.
The found-footage format also placed Diary of the Dead in an interesting moment for genre cinema. The Blair Witch Project had proved the commercial viability of the approach back in 1999, and Cloverfield was arriving in cinemas at almost exactly the same time as this film. Whether Romero's take on the style feels prescient or dated rather depends on when you come to it. At 96 minutes, it moves along at a reasonable clip, though the stripped-back production means it lives or dies on the strength of its ideas and performances more than on spectacle. If you have enjoyed other horror films reviewed here, such as Tiger Stripes, you will know that concept and execution do not always travel together in the genre, and that gap is very much at the heart of how this one tends to divide opinion.
Better now than when it released. The social commentary of social media, home video recordings, misinformation etc... are so well predicted and more prevalent now than when it was released. I love George Romero films, but this one doesn't hold a candle to Night, Dawn, Day or even Land. The premise is great, going back to the start of the outbreak. The recording style is great, very reminiscent of 28 days later with the home recording style. The acting and writing is awful, from everyone involved.
That tension between a genuinely sharp idea and the execution that surrounds it is something I keep coming back to with this one. The commentary on misinformation and the compulsive need to record and broadcast has only grown more pointed with time, and credit where it is due to Romero for seeing that coming when most of us were still figuring out how to embed a video. But a great idea in a horror film needs somewhere to land, and when the writing and performances are not carrying their weight, even the most relevant subtext starts to feel like it is floating loose. It sits, for me, as a fascinating footnote in Romero's career rather than a highlight of it. Sometimes the ones that are more interesting to think about than to watch are worth your time anyway. This is one of those.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-04-18
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from George A. Romero: Creepshow (1982) · Jacaranda Joe (2022) · BIOHAZARD 2 TV-CM (1997) · Survival of the Dead (2009)
More from Canada: History of the World in Three Minutes Flat (1980) · Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) · Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) · Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
