George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

66

The Weinstein Company (95 minutes)
and George A. Romero
Michelle Morgan , and Shawn Roberts

Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, and pervasive language

Summary: Jason Creed and a small crew of college filmmakers are in the Pennsylvania woods making a no-budget horror film when they hear the terrifying news that the dead have started returning to life. Led by Jason's girlfriend, Debra, the frightened young filmmakers set off in a friend's old Winnebago to try to get back to the only safety and security they know: their homes. But there is no escape from the crisis or any real home for them to go back to anymore. Everything they depend upon--all that they hold dear--is fractured as the plague of the living dead begins to spread. (The Weinstein Company)

Glenn Kenny
Premiere:
(100) A giddy kick-out-the-jams entertainment. Diary takes a tack that's not exactly new, but is new to Romero, and as one might expect, the director brings a sharp and uncompromising new perspective to it.

Scott Foundas
LA Weekly:
(90) In most horror movies, it's a given that we should root for the heroes to make it out alive, but Diary of the Dead isn't nearly so certain, and so it terrifies us all the more.

Eddie Cockrell
Variety:
(90) Gripping, intimate genre triumph.

Peter Travers
Rolling Stone:
(88) This one belongs with the leaders of the scare pack. Isn't it time that we give Romero his due? It's hardly an accident that Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg and Wes Craven recognize Romero as a master. He is.

Ty Burr
Boston Globe:
(88) Horror movie Rule #1: The only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the brain. George Romero himself laid this maxim down with his first film, the endlessly influential 1968 gutter classic "Night of the Living Dead." Forty years later, with George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the venerable filmmaker has done something almost as startling: He has put brains back into the zombie genre.

Kim Newman
Empire:
(80) A raw, vivid despatch from the frontline, this melds content with frights in classic Romero style. An outstanding exercise in showing the kids how to do it.

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