Diary of the Dead (2007)
★★★½ — Diary of the Dead (2007)
There's something strange about watching a film age into its own point. When George Romero put out Diary of the Dead in 2007, a lot of people (myself included, at the time) found the social commentary a bit heavy-handed, a bit obvious. A bunch of film students pointing cameras at the zombie apocalypse and narrating it for the internet. Right. We get it, George. But watching it now? The man was onto something. The misinformation, the compulsive need to document everything rather than just live through it, the way footage gets twisted and repackaged and broadcast out into the void. It's all there, and it hits harder now than it ever did on release. Credit where it's due.
The premise is genuinely smart. Rather than pushing further into a post-apocalyptic world, Romero winds the clock back to zero. We're at the very start of the outbreak, and we're seeing it through the lens of a group of film students who, naturally, keep filming. It strips the mythology back down to something raw and immediate, and the home-video aesthetic works well for that. It reminded me quite a bit of the handheld, guerrilla energy of 28 Days Later, that same feeling of chaos captured on the fly, the world falling apart one shaky frame at a time. There's an intimacy to it that a polished Hollywood production couldn't have pulled off.
And yet. This is Romero we're talking about, the man who made Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead. Films that are terrifying and funny and politically sharp all at once, films that hold up decade after decade. I love those films deeply. Even Land of the Dead, which splits opinion a bit, has a weight and a confidence to it that this one just can't match. Diary sits below all of them for me, and the reason is pretty simple: the acting and the writing are, to put it plainly, terrible. Across the board. Every character feels like a vessel for a thesis statement rather than an actual human being. The dialogue is clunky, the performances range from flat to actively grating, and when you're stuck with a found footage format, you need people you can believe in. Otherwise you're just watching cardboard cut-outs wander into zombie attacks.
It's a frustrating watch because of that gap between the idea and the execution. The concept earns its place in the Romero canon. The craft, from the performances especially, lets it down badly. You can see exactly what he was reaching for, and there are moments where it lands, where the commentary feels sharp and the horror feels genuine. But those moments are surrounded by scenes that make you wince for the wrong reasons.
I've seen Survival of the Dead, which came after this, and that has its own set of problems, though of a different kind. Diary is the more interesting failure of the two, if I'm being honest, because at least the ambition is clear. It's swinging for something real.
So here's where I land: Diary of the Dead is a better film in 2024 than it was in 2007, and that's a genuinely rare thing to be able to say. The world caught up with it. The social media age proved Romero right in ways that are almost uncomfortable. For that alone it deserves more credit than it typically gets. But it's still dragged down by writing and performances that undercut everything good about it. Flawed, frustrating, and weirdly prescient. Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-04-18
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Watch in the UK
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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)
