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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Diary Of The Dead trailer released!

It's finally out! The long awaited trailer for George Romero's Diary Of The Dead. This is surely one not to be missed.

Trailer looks promising, and I love the poster!

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Looks like fun, doesn't it?

Here is a review from Fangoria:

DIARY OF THE DEAD

Reviewed by CHRIS ALEXANDER

Chris sez…

When George A. Romero first announced plans to scale himself back, returning to his low-budget, independent roots after the high-gloss horror of 2005’s controversially studio-controlled LAND OF THE DEAD, true fans of the man rejoiced. When further details were revealed about the picture in question, however—promising first-person, pseudodocumentary camera antics—many of those very same fans promptly recoiled. On paper, the film read like a postmodern BLAIR WITCH PROJECT-esque stunt with Romero’s flesheating ghouls thrown in simply to give the film commercial heft. Some even argued that the whole thing reeked of an aging genre filmmaker vainly attempting to prove that he still had something relevant to say.

How utterly, cosmically wrong those nervy naysayers were.

DIARY OF THE DEAD, which had its world premiere September 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival, is quite simply one of the most daring, hypnotic and absolutely vital horror films of the past decade. It is without a doubt the signature work of a man who, at the seasoned age of 67, has miraculously kept his long fingers squished squarely on the fevered pulse of the collective North American political and cultural psyche. It’s also Romero’s most profoundly personal, eccentric and accomplished work since 1979’s landmark satirical zombie masterpiece DAWN OF THE DEAD, and in many ways feels like a stylistic kissing (biting?) cousin to his even more avant-garde 1977 vampire film MARTIN.

Ostensibly another reboot of the undead mythos the filmmaker established in 1968’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DIARY casts a troupe of new-to-semi-pro young actors as film students who, after witnessing the zombie dawn while on a remote movie shoot, travel cross-country in their rickety Winnebago, hi-def camera in tow, documenting the entire apocalyptic mess while trying to avoid becoming undead hors d’oeuvres. The key visual gimmick is that lead voyeur and self-appointed director Jason (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE’s Joshua Close) is rarely on screen, as his gawking lens is the one Romero chooses to follow. It’s a bold experiment for the director, introducing such stylistic guerrilla tactics to his standard turf—but he makes it work, thanks to technically innovative storytelling (our heroes are supposedly the ones editing the movie we see, and thus splice in footage of themselves captured on existing security cameras) and liberal—perhaps sometimes too liberal—doses of the writer/director’s trademark social criticism (this time, Romero’s target is our desensitized, “live or Memorex” media-obsessed culture).

There’s also a series of gleefully revolting, prosthetically created (by Gaslight Studios), CGI-goosed, blood-spattered money shots and some surprisingly broad laugh-out-loud humor. Watch out for the deaf-mute Amish farmer who scribbles on slates and gets very creative with a scythe. The performances by Shawn Roberts (who also appeared in LAND OF THE DEAD), Amy Lalonde and Michelle Morgan are effectively organic, and the film possesses a general low-tech eeriness, coupled with an aching sense of loss that sucks you in and keeps you glued to the screen.

Outlandish, expressionistic and absolutely, disorientingly alive, DIARY OF THE DEAD is the movie that Romero’s legion of cultists—this critic included—have been screaming for: a fascinating, almost art-house railing against a mad, mad world. It’s not the work of an old man, but of a cinematic enfant terrible with plenty of welled-up bile ready to spit on his would-be successors. Bon appetit.

1 comment:

  1. Cool!

    I always love a good zombie movie.

    ReplyDelete

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