i just got out of a screening of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead. I need to let it sink in before I make some big statement about it.
Tag line is a double entendre…ya think?
But I do have a question, rhetorical or otherwise: has anyone else ever noticed there are two kinds of zombie films? There’s the serious, socio-politial statement-making kind (see: everything else Romero’s done, pretty much) and then there’s the fun-loving, zombies-are-really-pretty-silly type (see: Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead). To be fair, there’s also the zombies-are-gory-as-fuck subgenre (see: Italian-made, circa 1970s-80s. I recommend Nightmare City and Demons for a trash-tastic double feature). Anyway, my point is, I realized tonight that I actually prefer zom-coms to zom-agit-prop. (Yeah, I did like 28 Days Later. It’s not a hard and fast rule.) And Romero obviously knows he’s Making A Statement, because there’s a joke to that effect early in Diary. But what exactly is that statement, and why is he still using zombies to make it? Old-school zombies, while cool as fuck, are pretty undynamic when you think about it. Am I going to go to hell if I say I liked the Dawn of the Dead remake more than Diary of the Dead?