Diary of the Dead

George Romero bounces back after the over-ripe Land of the Dead with some cheapy immediacy. Diary of the Dead presents itself as a viral artifact from within the post-apocalyptic universe. Dead 5 is the rejigged findings of a film school student quite unable to stop chronicling the slaughter, despite everyone constantly shouting at him. What a dick folks!

Beginning with unedited on-the-scene footage of the outbreak's immigrant class origin (which later turns up neutered on network TV), Dead 5 flips to a night shoot of a graduation horror piece - Shuffling Mummy vs a chesty girl. News of the shuffling undead hits the wireless and the student crew go their separate ways - an entitled louse pops off to his fortress, roping in an opportunist lady-friend. The remainder (including God-eye director) shack up in a Winnebago and go road-tripping. Horror ensues.

Dead 5 takes its found document aesthetic tremendously seriously - edits are annotated not just by leaping / jarring micro movement in stationary shots, but also by blue-outs and end-of-filming beeps. Dead 5, thankfully, never strays too far away from this remit, Music is almost entirely absent and Romero's panoramic shuffle shots are elsewhere. The film remains a plausible string of recovered footage throughout.

It does help that all of the installations visited are well served by CCTV set-ups though. Dead 5 demonstrates an arch, jokey structure, aping micro-hilarity youtube attention grabbers. Even the gore-gags themselves are more like outlandish punchlines than the sickening, meaty body horror of the previous entries. One sequence involving a deaf Amish gentleman is particularly bizarre / daft.

Other than that there's some rather heavy handed sermonising on camcorder culture and journalistic impartiality. Ever watched a nature documentary and bristled that the camera crew didn't step in to save some cute animal from the jaws of some salivating predator? Compound that by human! Subtext is spelt out, over and over again unfortunately. This film's issue works best in a short sequence were the Mummy attack is inadvertently restaged for real - the handheld director chomps at the bit as his cast finally give him something real. He gets the shot.

Come the final act Romero even gets to work out the fanboyish scenario of him helming an adaptation of the Resident Evil / Biohazard game series. A dwindling crew of survivors wander around a plush mansion house full of secret passages and on-sight curiosities. My what-if? gland twitched into hysteria. Fuck you Paul Anderson.