"Diary of the Dead"
Four decades after making a $115,000 black-and-white zombie movie in the Pennsylvania woods and reshaping horror-film history, George A. Romero has come full circle. Leaving studio dollars and high-end special effects behind, Romero has made a low-budget zombie movie set in the Pennsylvania woods. "Diary of the Dead," which premiered two weeks ago at Sundance and opens around the country today, is not another sequel or follow-up to his now-classic "Dead" trilogy, but more like an attempt to reimagine the original "Night of the Living Dead" in a post-9/11, post-Katrina, YouTube/MySpace world.
As a group of University of Pittsburgh student filmmakers headed by the compulsive Jason (Josh Close) and his recalcitrant sweetheart Debra (Michelle Morgan) witness the technological civilization around them abruptly crumbling under the assault of the brain-munching undead, they keep doggedly editing and uploading their videos to the Web. Everything we see in "Diary of the Dead," in fact, is supposedly shot by Jason and his friends and later edited by Debra, who explains her methods in an arch opening voiceover: "In some places I've added scary music to the video. Because I do want to scare you. Maybe it will wake you up."