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Review by David DiMichele

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Here’s a zombie movie that not only kicks ass in the zombie genre (it's among the best I’ve seen), but also in the world that we’ve all come to be a part of - the mass media world. Legendary filmmaker George A. Romero created Diary of the Dead as if it were one of his old gritty independent films from back in 1968, but added a modern day touch to it by the way technology is used. This new touch he brings to his film penetrates deep into the human body and mind. Last time I checked, a zombie movie should only scare you. Here Romero scares and knocks us off our feet, leaving us pondering hard about what we just witnessed. You leave the theatre feeling stunned.

Romero produces an intense commentary on our social community and then turns it into a kind of satire. He sticks his ideas deep into whatever the hot topic of the moment might be. In this case it’s the YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and bloggers galore world. He demonstrates those technology’s weaknesses and the way they’re put to use and how they’re somewhat to blame for breeding blood-sucking zombies. He pushes the media and broadcasting world to the brink as he punishes them for not giving all the information they capture on their cameras, raising the question: Why do we film certain heinous actions? During the movie, a voiceover reminds us that most people don’t stop at the scene of a car accident to help, but instead to watch and see how bad the outcome really is.

Earlier this year Cloverfield used the handheld camera. I’m here to say that Romero uses the same technique and literally crushes all that Cloverfield had to offer. This handheld camera belongs to Jason (Joshua Close) a senior at Pitt University trying to create a horror movie, in his case a mummy film, for his senior project - it’s called Death After Death. It’s a movie inside of a movie. He’s one who loves to capture everything. The narrator of the movie is Debra (Michelle Morgan), who is also the editor and his girlfriend. She explains why Jason is so obsessed with capturing events on celluloid - he and ten of his friends, who make up the movie crew, download videos from the internet involving people killing one another. Hangings, massacres, riots and other acts of violence that don’t make it onto television because they're too vicious - all strike interest in Jason.

He wants to give society the truth. He feels that we’re being robbed when newscasts don’t show the whole story but instead sugarcoat it so that it's fit to be  shown on television. When he and his crew first hear news on a radio about the dead awakening a few minutes after they’ve initially been killed, Jason is determined to bring all the information he can possibly film to his fellow blog subscribers and, eventually, to the world. Capturing an apocalyptic occurrence like this would be a huge hit.

The cast of this film is likeable and, most of all, they seem up to date on their horror movie knowledge. For the first time I can remember, Romero gives us characters that are smart, whereas in other horror films the characters don’t know anything and have never watched a single horror movie. He doesn’t miss the chance to promote his own town because we hop from Scranton to Homestead, Pennsylvania and everyone in our crew goes to the University of Pittsburgh. We have a class couple, a computer geek, a tough guy and an alcoholic professor who kills zombies with almost every weapon imaginable. They all pack into a Winnebago hoping to find their families and eventually safety. When Jason stares at each of them through his camera, he becomes not a director but a peeping Tom.

We’re all voyeurs. The camera is the star here as whoever is filming at the time is meant to keep shooting, no matter what the circumstance. Fascination grabs hold of those filming the action and they forget they’re filming some of their own friends as they die. This is Romero’s beef with journalists: they keep shooting no matter how bad or how a good a situation is.

An ode to our world is pushed into our faces as Romero shows what happens when we kill at will, with no consideration for the victim. We bring death to ourselves when we viciously kill members of the human race and then share the recordings with millions of people over the internet. Zombies are backups for Romero this time, as he uses them to depict the culture crazed society of today. This is the first and only time you’ll see a zombie film where the zombies aren’t the result of an epidemic or a virus or radioactive poison. Instead, we humans and the way we hurt our own people are the viruses and the poisons that gave birth to bloodsucking zombies.

Film Rating: *** 1/2 out of ****

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