Otherwise, the 1.85:1 transfer is polished but not so slick that it betrays the images’ “amateur” origins, alternating appropriately naturalistic and muted colors. Due to those time constraints, the showier gags were created in postproduction via CGI, and the artificiality of a few of them is unfortunately heightened in the digital disc format. (I’d love to see him get his own spinoff.) The gore is toned down from Romero’s previous entries, due to the caught-on-the-fly nature of the storytelling and the brief shooting schedule, but the writer/director does introduce a few amusing, fresh ways to off the undead, and the makeup FX overseen by Greg Nicotero and created by Gaslight are in the fine tradition of the Dead oeuvre. In fact, some of the best moments in Diary of the Dead are the humorous touches, particularly the bits involving Samuel the Amish zombie killer. That might-as Romero notes on the Dimension Extreme DVD’s commentary-add an extra wrinkle to her character, but it pretty much kills the scene’s suspense dead. As the group enters a house that may be unoccupied, or inhabited by the living or the dead, Debra’s voice suddenly breaks in to state that she debated whether or not to reveal what happens next. Romero’s heart is in the right place and the actors all do earnest work, but the constant reminders of how meaningful everything is gets in the way of the drama, and at times it undercuts the scares too.
#Diary of the dead movie
Here, unfortunately, every point is boldfaced and underlined by Debra’s narration and occasionally in the spoken dialogue, to the point where the traditional cranial abuse inflicted upon the zombies becomes nothing compared to the way the movie beats you over the head with its statements. Romero’s prior entries were all rife with sociopolitical undertones, but for the most part those were allowed to speak for themselves. This new vérité approach to his now-classic tropes gives Romero the opportunity to comment on a modern world overwhelmed by taped/Internet information.Īnd comment and comment and comment on it. This one reboots the previous movies’ themes for the digital age, centering on a group of film students who become caught up in a new dawn of the dead, capturing the burgeoning ghoul outbreak on their cameras-largely the one wielded by Debra’s boyfriend Jason (Joshua Close)-with bits and pieces stitched in from other on-line sources. Romero’s latest entry in his ongoing undead saga. Specifically, it would have been a welcome option to silence the narration by Debra (Michelle Morgan), the film’s heroine, who has ostensibly edited together the video footage that makes up George A. Many DVDs have alternate audio tracks one can choose to listen to, but Diary of the Dead is the first one on which I was hoping I could mute one particular sound channel instead.
Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 28, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
0 kommentar(er)
