J-Film #5 - 'Diary of the Dead'

'Oh deary me' was the idle thought that drifted through my mind upon departing the cinema last night and not because the film is bad, or indeed, anything less than superb, but because it was going to be hard to review. The reasons it is hard, is because the film is so great and does allot of things so well and subtly, it can be hard to find our, just what makes it good; but i shall try.

Anyway, 'Diary of the Dead' is the next, possibly last, film in George A. Romero's classic satirical zombie series, not following on from 'Land of the Dead' but parallel to the times of the original 'Night of the Living Dead' (possibly one of the most iconic films ever, if you have the original ending and not the fucking queer one, that is) however, as Mr. Romero likes to do he has set it in the modern day, for his satires strongly reflect the troubles and occurrences of the day, and i assure you none of his satire is lost.

throughout the film lots of satirical points are underlaid on the main zombie survival thriller, including humanity's need to document things (It is steady cam, but ill talk about that later) and his classic player, how the zombies are better than us. Those points are, if anything very obvious and practically said by the woman commentating the 'diary' and many more accompany it, but some of the most important satire i hid deep within the bowels of the film, its reflects New Orleans, yes, big disaster, people being raped and exploited by everyone, all the rich fuckers bugger off leaving the poor black minority populace to fend for themselves, creating a crisis zone, the government not helping at all, people blaming it on Immigration etc. Its all there including that fact that presidential coward George W. Bush was hiding in his mansion, just like the remaining cast are at a point during the film.

What is also great is how akin this is to 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead especially' where as well as great satire, there are many comedic, laugh out loud moments, say I as remembering a deaf, mute Amish man who, as he throws a stick of dynamite at a huddle of encroaching 'Flesh Eaters', holds up a sign proclaiming him as 'Samuel' as bits of zombie fly casually and humorously over his head. So, its got the strong aura of satire, the typical apocalyptic humor and the brilliant slow shuffling, useless zombies, they are not dangerous at all if you know where they are, and thats just brilliantly reminiscent of that 'ooosome' scene in 'Night of the Living Dead' where the main female character just walks past all those zombies, with no danger to her whatsoever, they are not individually difficult to manage or dangerous,but they just wear you down with numbers, and with the stress they cause, they 'Zerglings', but apart from that the best description for them would be soviet Russian troops, theres just so many, so so many.

So, its an amazing and classic piece of George A. Romero cinema art, and just about the only American film that actually has an admirable British character in it. "But whats bad about it?" I hear you guffaw over the retaining wall i have built to separate myself from you zombies, well the 'Steady Cam', it isn't 'Steady Cam'. Now this may be for myriad reasons, such as, they are film students, who know how to use a camera and they have proper camera's not like Clover-Shit's hand-held, but this did get quite annoying, because it seemed not to be bale to decide whether it was 'SC' or not, now my dad liked it because he was never a fan of 'SC' in the first place, but i just don't think it was used in the correct manner, there weren't enough zombie jump moments as there could have been with a first person view from the camera man, angle, allot of missed potential there, I think. but if you don't like steady Cam, because it makes you dizzy or for any other reason, this fact will probably go down allot better with you.

Join me next issue, when hopefully It will be British 'Horocom' 'The Cottage' on the J-films elegant Marble table, hand carved by 67 million, naked, heaving virgins, oh and by the way 'Cloverfield' is shit.

Rundown -

Shooting: 6

Characterization: 7

Soundtrack: 8

Plot: 9

Effects: 7

Variable field dependent on context and genre - Satire and Humor: 9

Overall J-score: 8.5/10 J-FILM MUST SEE

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