George A. Romero has dedicated his life to the zombie (though he rarely uses that word) genre. It began in the late 60s, with Night of the Living Dead, a film about a group of survivors trapped inside of a big farmhouse as the walking dead. The film wasn’t just about that though. There was a subtle amount of satire tossed in that gave it a bit more resonance than your average horror film. The next time he brought the living dead to screen was with Dawn of the Living Dead (1978) and had an even bigger amount of social satire that almost made it more of a comedy than anything else.

By 1985, it seems that Romero lost touch with everything that made these first two entries so brilliant. Day of the Dead follows a group surviving in an underground military bunker. It lacks the importance and humor of the other two, and has a terribly slow pace. After that, it took him more than two decades to make another. Land of the Dead (2005) was a pleasurable enough film to watch but just never quite lived up to anyone’s expectations.

It was popular enough though for some studio out there to give George another chance. So this time he gives us Diary of the Dead, a combination of The Blair Witch Project and Night of the Living Dead. That’s twice in the span of a month that I have compared a movie to Blair Witch. I can only hope that I never have to do it again for as long as I live.

Diary is presented as the first and final movie by film student named Jason. He yearns to be a documentary filmmaker but ends up shooting a horror movie for his thesis. During the shoot, news reports of waking dead cluster the radio and the crew decides to pack up their gear and head to each of their homes. So they pack into an RV and head out. The news reports grow more and more frequent and the team has a few run-ins of their own. Jason records everything, even though the crew present their discontent with having a camera on them at all times. It is exactly the type of thing you would expect a film student to do should this type of situation ever happen.

This film is more similar to the recent Cloverfield before it. Both films are shot by the characters in the middle of the action, as they deal with a terrible tragedy, and these kids are just as obnoxious as any other. Jason (and the rest of the crew) can fit any film/art student cliche you can toss at them, only it is multiplied to the millionth degree. We get that this is supposed to be from the perspective of a film major, but did Romero have to make it so painfully authentic? Diary actually feels more like a student work than that of a maverick director.

If there is anything we can commend this film for, it would be for its skill with steadiness. Unlike that monster movie that came only a month ago, Diary won’t give you a headache with its look, though it might give you one for everything else it contains.

We get Mr. Romero, you like zombie movies. We all do, but not like this. It’s time for you to move on to new territory. Perhaps you should write an action/buddy cop picture. There hasn’t been a good one of those since the early 90s. Wait a second, maybe you could write an action/buddy cop movie with the walking dead! It would be like Lethal Weapon by way of a Dead picture. I guarantee that movie would be a lot less stale than this one.