Dear George A. Romero: Retire. Please.

I will be on my couch, watching 28 Days Later

Diary of the Dead is a painful reminder that George A. Romero is in fact George A. Romero. For those wondering, George A. Romero is a guy who got lucky and never figured out when to quit.

I’m not going to act like I wasn’t an obsessive Romero fan at one point, but I’m not going to lie and say I ever really cared for anything more than Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Sure, Day of the Dead had its make-up going for it, and Land of the Dead was a passable popcorn flick, but the newly released “rugged” and “stripped” Diary of the Dead proves that the only thing less passionate than my fan-ship is Romero’s filmmaking ability.

The flick is set on the premise of a group of film students working on their senior project, a horror film, getting caught up in a real-world crisis, ultimately feeling compelled to document it. A twist this certainly is, but well-executed it most certainly was not. Holding the film back is an unaccomplished cast of actors that makes me question Mr. Romero. While he’s surely overrated, he’s still who he is; the most renowned zombie writer/director of our time. That being said, I can’t help but wonder how Romero, known for his staunch allegories, allowed such writhing irony to ruin his latest picture. See, while the film is paced around a group of film students’ amateur documentary, it’s the actual film’s amateurish execution that holds it back.

Obviously Romero opted to cast unknown actors, which is by all means reasonable and accountable. Still, one has to wonder if these were truly the best options. Whether it be as a result of stale dialogue or passionless archetypes, Diary of the Dead’s cast stumbles and struggles to make sense of the film’s already limited narrative. More troubling is Romero’s blatancy. No longer using zombies as an avenue for socio-political commentary, Diary of the Dead opts instead to have one of its lead actress narrate and verbally communicate the issues. Rather than revive his once-fervent allegory, Romero shoves his ideas on post-modern media right down our throat. Rather than finding a creative way of addressing the age of the blogosphere and information over saturation, Romero instead crafted a grossly underwhelming and poorly executed film and shaped it around the most primitive of ideas; people are fucked up. His elementary opinions on the human condition are only made less noticeable by his juvenile stabs at the news media and his harkening to government censorship conspiracies.

Once again, the irony is palpable. It is only after sitting through nearly 90 minutes of zombie film that I, the viewer, realizes just how brainless I have become –not as a result of my own doing, at least not directly, but rather as a response to this film’s lackadaisical and amateurish approach. There is very little to be happy about with this film. It is, in many ways, a contemporary precursor to the earlier-noted popcorn flick Land of the Dead, only, you know, not entertaining at all. There were no laughs to be had, and it certainly wasn’t scary. The effects were passable if a little overblown, and even the implied HOLY FUCK death scenes (one of an Amish man impaling himself with a scythe to annihilate the zombie behind him comes to mind) are moot within the film’s diegesis because they’re so half-hearted and blasé.

hey george, your career is just as dead as most of your characters.

So who is George A. Romero? He is both a legend and a fraud. Most importantly, he’s a filmmaker who should’ve moved on after he got his break and ventured to expand his legacy rather than to piss all over it. While he pioneered the zombie-flick, undead-by-number movies just can’t get it done anymore.

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