Today's generation is a prickly one. MySpace and YouTube populate their time, alongside their iPods and camera-equipped cell phones.
Anybody and everybody can document whatever they want, from a dog riding a skateboard to a former Iraqi dictator being executed by hanging.
George Romero's "Diary of the Dead" is a philosophical representation of this group of young individuals and a metaphorical criticism of the state of our nation, albeit an overt yet long-winded one.
Somewhat of a precursor to Romero's "Night of the living Dead," a group of film students are making an independent horror flick as breaking news reports surface that the dead are coming back to life as the flesh-eating undead. And not just those bitten are turning; those dead by anything from burning to death or from a fatal gunshot wound are returning to life.
Narrated by Debra (Michelle Morgan) and "filmed" by Jason (Joshua Close), the students abandon the film project, but Jason continues to film. "If this turns out to be a big thing, I just want to record it," he says, adding, "All that's left is to record what's happening for whoever remains when it's over."
Every road they take back home from school, every hospital they visit for supplies and help are abandoned or flooding with zombies. And the government is using the news footage of victims of a murder-suicide coming back to life, which opens the film, in edited, "spin" form to cover-up the actual chaos that ensues across the country-and world.
Romero paints a bleak picture of the outlook of our country, as well as the ways and means of information and documentation. In Night of the Living Dead," Romero critiques the late-1960s American, Post-Vietnam culture. In "Dawn of the Dead," he gave us zombies in a shopping mall, a social commentary of how, as humans, we were undead consumers, buying and buying and spending the almighty dollar to the evils of consumerism.
Here, Romero Uses his own basis of the undead coming back to haunt us and those zombies infecting others and spins it to the present day: whatever has caused this chaos, out of nowhere undead people are coming at us and every person that either the zombies "infect" or our country disparages against will turn against us all.
Even the quaint, deaf-mute Amish man is a target for those walking corpses.
However, looking too deep into the movie took away it entertainment value. There are references to Romero's previous films of his "Dead series." There is much less zombie action in this than in the previous Romero zombie flicks. Notwithstanding, some quality kills and "Blair Witch"-style photography (those bothered by the camera work "Cloverfield," take note) heighten the horror but to a lesser degree than most gory zombie flicks.
Instead, a profound anti-war message-particularly of the current Iraqi conflict we are stuck in the middle of-wraps up the movie. "There's always a market for horror-believable horror," Jason says at the beginning.
Romero and "Diary of the Dead" show that the war-both abroad and at home-is far from over. And it's as real as it gets.
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