By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
It sure looked as if the zombie revival was on the brink of expiring. Especially after the flesh-eaters were reduced to a livestock joke in the ill-fated comedy Black Sheep. Tagline: "Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs."
But if anyone could keep the genre on life support, it's the filmmaker who more or less invented it nearly 40 years ago with Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero.
With Diary of the Dead, which premieres Saturday as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program, the 67-year-old guru of gobbling ghouls has done a radical rewind, imagining what a 21st-century zombie outbreak would be like.
The film already is creating a stir: A Toronto Star poll of in-the-know festivalgoers picked Diary of the Dead as one of the most-anticipated titles.
Whereas Night used strangers barricaded in a farmhouse to reflect the nightmares of the Vietnam era, Diary downloads a post-9/11 and Hurricane Katrina image of widespread chaos for the YouTube/MySpace generation.
"I had a version of the story in mind when I was doing Land of the Dead," he says, referring to his return to his zombie roots in 2005. "I thought it would be cool to go back to Day 1, when it all starts, and lay media stuff on top."
The action centers on a group of students filming an old-fashioned horror movie for school. The scares turn real when they see shocking TV footage of corpses feasting on the living. The class assignment evolves into a documentary, obsessively shot by Jason (Joshua Close), who is driven to record every terrifying moment of their frantic escape in a Winnebago.
Though the movie might sound Blair Witch Project-inspired, the handheld camera doesn't shake and the background blares with news reports (some of it actual coverage of Katrina and 9/11), radio broadcasts and amateur Web accounts.
"During the shootings at Virginia Tech, people were filming out of the windows," Romero says. "CNN was asking flood victims to send in pictures. We have all this information now, but it's not being managed."
Though Diary is a departure, it also retains much of the lore and the gore from the director's original four-part Dead saga, but with a few tasty twists. Instead of halting zombies by just shooting them in the head, one stalker gets his brains eaten by chemicals. The slow vs. swift zombie debate continues, with Romero making a humorous case for his shambling brand.
And there are cameos. Those who pay attention might recognize voice-overs by Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Pegg, Wes Craven and Guillermo Del Toro.
Romero has declared his low-budget independence again after collaborating with Universal on Land of the Dead, which was lauded by critics but earned a middling $20 million.
"I'm not bitter," he says. "I was amazed by the reviews." But a date switch from fall to summer proved to be a bad move: "I thought it would do better than it did, but it got lost between Batman Begins and War of the Worlds."
Romero prefers working without studio interference. "That way, if I see a nice sunset, I can shoot it without writing a memo. I am able to do what I want — and dig my own grave."
He isn't ready to bury his interest in the waking deceased anytime soon. They continue to be the perfect vessels for what he calls his "snapshots in time." Besides, Romero has another premise. A full-out zombie comedy. One that presumably does not involve sheep.
1 comment:
Yay for him. It must be nice to direct flicks when you're pushing 70. I can't imagine the pressures are quite the same.
Still, when you see the world through HUGE GLASSES, nothing bothers you.
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