Diary of the Dead | 2007
"Diary of the Dead" (promoted as George A. Romero's "Diary of the Dead") is a found footage-style horror film produced in 2007, written and directed by George A. Romero. It was independently produced but distributed theatrically by The Weinstein Company, released in theaters on February 15, 2008, and later on DVD by Dimension Extreme and Genius Products on May 20, 2008.
"Diary of the Dead" is the fifth installment in Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" series, set against the backdrop of the outbreak of a zombie plague.
The film's footage shows a news team documenting the story of an immigrant man who kills his wife and son before committing suicide. The son and wife turn into zombies and kill several medical personnel and police officers, but one paramedic and a reporter survive after being bitten. The narrator, Debra, explains that most of the footage was recorded by the cameraman but was never broadcast.
Young film students from the University of Pittsburgh, along with their professor advisor Andrew Maxwell, are filming a horror movie when they hear news of a large-scale riot and murder. Two students, Ridley and Francine, decide to leave the group, and the project director, Jason, goes to pick up his girlfriend Debra (the narrator) from the college dorm. When she is unable to contact her family, they set off for her parents' home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Along the way, the group, consisting of Jason, Debra, Professor Maxwell, Elliot, cameraman Tony, Mary, and the couple Gordo and Tracy, encounters a rehabilitated Pennsylvania state trooper and three zombies. The group stops, and Mary attempts suicide. Friends take her to a hospital, but they discover the dead are turning into zombies, and they fight for survival on their way to Debra's parents' house.
Mary becomes a zombie and is killed by Maxwell, and the group fights off several rehabilitated patients and staff, with Debra using a defibrillator to kill one. During their escape, Gordo is bitten by a zombie and soon dies. His girlfriend Tracy begs the others not to shoot him immediately, but when he revives, she is forced to shoot him herself. Soon, they become isolated when the RV's fuel line breaks. They are attacked by zombies, but a deaf Amish man named Samuel saves them with dynamite. Tracy repairs the broken fuel line with Samuel's help, but before they can escape, he is bitten and kills both himself and his attacker with a scythe.
As they pass through the city, they are stopped by a group of armed survivors led by a member of the National Guard. They are taken to their facility, where Jason uploads his footage, and Tony kills a zombie guard. There, Debra receives a message from her brother, who informs her that he was camping with the family in West Virginia during the initial attack. The students set off for Debra's house, relying on the internet and bloggers as their only trustworthy sources of information.
Upon arriving at Debra's house, they find her rehabilitated mother and brother eating their father, and Maxwell kills them with a bow and arrow. They escape the house but are stopped by other National Guardsmen, who rob them and leave them with only weapons and two cameras. They arrive at Ridley's mansion, where Ridley explains that his parents, staff, and Francine are dead, and he buried them behind the house. Ridley shows Debra and Tony that he dumped his parents, staff, and Francine in the pool.
Ridley abandons Debra and Tony, revealing that he has been bitten by a zombie, which explains his strange behavior. Ridley soon dies and revives, killing and infecting Elliot and attacking Tracy and Jason. Jason intervenes to allow Tracy to escape at the last moment. Angry at Jason for not helping her with the camera, Tracy leaves the group in the RV. The remaining survivors hide in a locked shelter inside the house, and Jason leaves the group to continue filming, ultimately being attacked and infected by Ridley. Maxwell kills Ridley with an ancient sword, and Debra euthanizes Jason while continuing to film. Soon, many zombies, including the rehabilitated Elliot, attack the mansion, forcing Debra, Tony, and Professor Maxwell to take refuge in the mansion's panic room.
Debra contemplates whether humanity is worth saving as she watches footage of Jason's hunting party shooting the dead.
Romero mentioned that this film was more challenging to shoot than traditional films: "It really required choreography down to the shoelaces." He extensively used computer-generated imagery, allowing him to shoot the film quickly and add effects later. Additionally, the film's handheld style required him to deviate from his usual method of shooting and editing scenes with various camera angles. Instead, Romero filmed much of the action in long continuous takes: "The camera was 360 degrees, so all the actors had to duck under the lens as it passed by," Romero said. "The cast was excellent. They had a lot of theater experience. I think they could have gone from the first scene to the end of the movie in one take." The entire film was shot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
This film is the fifth in Romero's "Dead" series, with notable references to previous Romero films, such as the news track used in the scene where the cast is in Ben's garage from the 1968 "Night of the Living Dead." This film is not a sequel to "Land of the Dead" but a reboot. The film takes place in a separate timeline from previous "Living Dead" films. Romero believed that if the zombie apocalypse occurred too far along, schools would have been closed, making it implausible for student filmmakers to be at the center of the story. He was also partially inspired by the "Book of the Dead" anthology series, which depicted other events occurring at the same time. Despite the fourth film, "Land of the Dead," being studio-produced through Universal Studios, "Diary of the Dead" was produced by Romero and his producer friend Peter Grunwald's Romero-Grunwald Productions and Artfire Films.
