Diary of the Dead
Encyclopedia
Diary of the Dead is a 2007 American/Canadian horror film
by George A. Romero
. Although independently produced, it was distributed theatrically by Dimension Films
and was released in cinema
s on February 15, 2008 and on DVD
by The Weinstein Company
and Genius Entertainment on May 20, 2008.
Diary of the Dead is the fifth film in Romero's highly acclaimed Dead series of zombie films. It is not a direct sequel
to previous films in the series, instead being "a rejigging of the myth" according to Romero.
Diary of the Dead follows a band of people making a horror film at the time of the first outbreak who decide to record the epidemic incident documentary
-style and end up themselves being chased down by zombie
s.
students from the University of Pittsburgh
are in the woods making their own horror film along with their faculty advisor, Andrew Maxwell, when they hear on the radio the news of apparent mass-riot
ing and mass murder
. Soon, these reports include cannibalism
and the fact that the recently deceased are inexplicably waking and walking. Two of the students, Ridley and Francine, decide to leave the group, while project director Jason, who wants to film the events documentary
-style, heads to the dormitory of his girlfriend Debra Moynahan. When she cannot contact her family, they travel in an RV to the house of Debra's parents in Scranton, Pennsylvania
.
On the way, the driver, Mary, sees a car accident and runs over a highway patrolman and three other zombies trying to escape from them. The group stops and, after running over an undead state trooper, Mary shoots herself in the head with a pistol. Her friends take her to a hospital, where they find the dead are returning to life as zombies, and they need to fight to survive while traveling to Debra's parents' house. Mary turns into a zombie and attacks the group, but Maxwell shoots her dead. On their way out, one of the students, Gordo, is bitten by a zombie. After Gordo dies, his girlfriend Tracy begs the group not to shoot him immediately; she is ultimately forced to shoot him herself when he comes back as a zombie.
They are sidelined when the fuel line of the RV breaks, but they are assisted by a deaf Amish
man named Samuel. The barn they are hiding in is surrounded by zombies whom Samuel fights off as Tracy repairs the RV. Just before escaping, Samuel is bitten and takes his own life by stabbing himself with a scythe through his head, also taking out the zombie who bit him.
They later pass a city and are stopped by an armed gang. They try to barter with the men, who are better armed and supplied. The men are survivors of the attack on their city; everyone else left. The leader is a member of the National Guard, and does not believe the military will help. They rest in the city for a while, and edit their videos. There is a small argument between Jason and Debra, who thinks surviving the catastrophe is more important than documenting it. Jason sees the recordings as a necessity to show the world what was really happening. They also find out that Debra's family were camping for the extent of the crisis, and is just now on their way home.
The National Guard survivors gear up after one of their members has a heart attack, dies, then goes missing. They mistakenly kill one of their own and then chase the zombie into the fuel supply area, killing it with a canister of hydrochloric acid
. The students resupply and leave for Debra's house. They get a video stream from Tokyo
from a survivor until they lose signal. The only dependable source of information is now the internet, added by bloggers.
When they arrive at Debra's house, they find the reanimated corpses of her mother and brother, whom they fight off. They escape the house and decide to travel back to Ridley's mansion, but are stopped by different National Guardsmen, who rob them, leaving them only their weapons. They arrive at Ridley's mansion and find it abandoned. A bookcase in the mansion opens to reveal a panic room where a shell-shocked Ridley stumbles out. He brings the group on a grand tour and then explains that his father was the first to turn, then his mother and then the servants and that Francine was attacked by his butler. He invites Debra and Tony to follow him outside to where he buried his family and the servants. It turns out that he did not bury them, but just dumped them into the pool.
Ridley locks the two in the pool room and runs away to the house where he transforms and begins to hunt the group. Maxwell hears the commotion and runs into the panic room with the shotgun. Ridley attacks Tracy and Jason at the RV, before Jason distracts Ridley long enough for Tracy to knock him out. She then runs to the RV and drives away, angry at Jason for filming rather than helping. Ridley travels back to the house and pushes Eliot into a bathtub, where he is electrocuted.
The survivors go back to the panic room for a while, but Ridley returns and infects Jason. Maxwell stabs Ridley in the head with a sword, and Debra shoots Jason. Debra watches the video on Jason's camera and sees his last message, about his happiness to be documenting the events, apparently filmed right before his attack. Debra decides to continue the video.
In the morning they awake to see the zombies who were in the pool have made their way out and were breaking into the mansion. Maxwell, Debra, and Tony lock themselves in the panic room. Inside, Debra watches the last thing Jason downloaded: A hunting party shooting zombies of people they previously left tied to trees, leaving them to die and reanimate and using them as shooting targets. After seeing this, Debra wonders whether the human race is worth saving.
Quentin Tarantino
, Wes Craven
, Guillermo del Toro
, Simon Pegg
, and Stephen King
lend their voices as newscasters on the radio. Shawn Roberts also appeared in Land of the Dead
, making him the tenth actor to appear in at least two of Romero's zombie films, after Simon Pegg
, Joseph Pilato
, Tom Savini
, Gregory Nicotero
, Boyd Banks
, John Amplas
, Alan van Sprang, Taso N. Stavrakis
and Romero himself. Of the aforementioned ten, Romero and Nicotero have made appearances in three films, with Alan van Sprang set to join them upon the release of the next installment, Survival of the Dead, reprising his role.
's Night of the Living Dead
is used in the scene where the cast is in Ben's garage.
However, the film is not a direct sequel
to any of Romero's films: the film is "a rejigging of the myth" says Romero, and is meant as a side story during the same timeframe as Night of the Living Dead. Even though the fourth film, Land of the Dead
(2005
), was studio-produced through Universal Studios
, Diary of the Dead was produced by Romero-Grunwald Productions, formed by Romero and his producer friend Peter Grunwald, with Artfire Films.
on October 19, 2006.
Despite the low production budget, somewhere around $2 million, Romero made extensive use of computer-generated imagery
because it allowed him to shoot the film quickly and add the effects later. Also, the film's style, as if shot with hand-held cameras, necessitated a shift from his usual method of working, which involves filming multiple camera angles and assembling scenes in the editing room. Instead, Romero filmed much of the action in long, continuous takes: "The camera was 360, so everybody was an acrobat, ducking under the lens when the camera came past you," said Romero. "The cast was great. They had a lot of theater experience. I think they could have gone from scene one all the way to the end of the movie, all in a single shot."
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival
(TIFF), Midnight Madness on September 8, 2007.
According to a poll taken by the Toronto Star
, it was one of the most anticipated films at the Festival. Just four days later, The Weinstein Company
announced that it had purchased the rights to distribute Diary of the Dead in the United States and Mexico for $2.5 million. There, Dimension Films
are distributing the film.
, deleted scene
s, Behind the Scenes
featurette, and five short films that came about via a MySpace
contest. It was released the same day as a new authorized edition of Night of the Living Dead
on DVD was released by The Weinstein Company
.
The film was released on Region 2 on June 29, 2008, in single disc, double disc and Blu-ray editions. The double-disc and Blu-ray both contained a UK exclusive interview from Frightfest 08, and a feature length documentary entitled One for the Fire - The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The double-disc edition was released in limited, numbered steelbook packaging, and online retailer play.com
sold an exclusive edition in a slipcase. On October 21, 2008, a Blu-ray version was released in the United States.
, and that it also retained Romero's social commentary
, including American's new-found reliance on the media
for information and community. The film currently has a "fresh" rating of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes
.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
by George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
. Although independently produced, it was distributed theatrically by Dimension Films
Dimension Films
Dimension Films is a motion picture unit currently a part of The Weinstein Company. It was formerly used as Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax Films, to produce and release genre films...
and was released in cinema
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
s on February 15, 2008 and on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
by The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
and Genius Entertainment on May 20, 2008.
Diary of the Dead is the fifth film in Romero's highly acclaimed Dead series of zombie films. It is not a direct sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
to previous films in the series, instead being "a rejigging of the myth" according to Romero.
Diary of the Dead follows a band of people making a horror film at the time of the first outbreak who decide to record the epidemic incident documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
-style and end up themselves being chased down by zombie
Zombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
s.
Plot
A group of young film studiesFilm studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
students from the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
are in the woods making their own horror film along with their faculty advisor, Andrew Maxwell, when they hear on the radio the news of apparent mass-riot
Riot
A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property or people. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are thought to be typically chaotic and...
ing and mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
. Soon, these reports include cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
and the fact that the recently deceased are inexplicably waking and walking. Two of the students, Ridley and Francine, decide to leave the group, while project director Jason, who wants to film the events documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
-style, heads to the dormitory of his girlfriend Debra Moynahan. When she cannot contact her family, they travel in an RV to the house of Debra's parents in Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...
.
On the way, the driver, Mary, sees a car accident and runs over a highway patrolman and three other zombies trying to escape from them. The group stops and, after running over an undead state trooper, Mary shoots herself in the head with a pistol. Her friends take her to a hospital, where they find the dead are returning to life as zombies, and they need to fight to survive while traveling to Debra's parents' house. Mary turns into a zombie and attacks the group, but Maxwell shoots her dead. On their way out, one of the students, Gordo, is bitten by a zombie. After Gordo dies, his girlfriend Tracy begs the group not to shoot him immediately; she is ultimately forced to shoot him herself when he comes back as a zombie.
They are sidelined when the fuel line of the RV breaks, but they are assisted by a deaf Amish
Amish
The Amish , sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches...
man named Samuel. The barn they are hiding in is surrounded by zombies whom Samuel fights off as Tracy repairs the RV. Just before escaping, Samuel is bitten and takes his own life by stabbing himself with a scythe through his head, also taking out the zombie who bit him.
They later pass a city and are stopped by an armed gang. They try to barter with the men, who are better armed and supplied. The men are survivors of the attack on their city; everyone else left. The leader is a member of the National Guard, and does not believe the military will help. They rest in the city for a while, and edit their videos. There is a small argument between Jason and Debra, who thinks surviving the catastrophe is more important than documenting it. Jason sees the recordings as a necessity to show the world what was really happening. They also find out that Debra's family were camping for the extent of the crisis, and is just now on their way home.
The National Guard survivors gear up after one of their members has a heart attack, dies, then goes missing. They mistakenly kill one of their own and then chase the zombie into the fuel supply area, killing it with a canister of hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid is a solution of hydrogen chloride in water, that is a highly corrosive, strong mineral acid with many industrial uses. It is found naturally in gastric acid....
. The students resupply and leave for Debra's house. They get a video stream from Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
from a survivor until they lose signal. The only dependable source of information is now the internet, added by bloggers.
When they arrive at Debra's house, they find the reanimated corpses of her mother and brother, whom they fight off. They escape the house and decide to travel back to Ridley's mansion, but are stopped by different National Guardsmen, who rob them, leaving them only their weapons. They arrive at Ridley's mansion and find it abandoned. A bookcase in the mansion opens to reveal a panic room where a shell-shocked Ridley stumbles out. He brings the group on a grand tour and then explains that his father was the first to turn, then his mother and then the servants and that Francine was attacked by his butler. He invites Debra and Tony to follow him outside to where he buried his family and the servants. It turns out that he did not bury them, but just dumped them into the pool.
Ridley locks the two in the pool room and runs away to the house where he transforms and begins to hunt the group. Maxwell hears the commotion and runs into the panic room with the shotgun. Ridley attacks Tracy and Jason at the RV, before Jason distracts Ridley long enough for Tracy to knock him out. She then runs to the RV and drives away, angry at Jason for filming rather than helping. Ridley travels back to the house and pushes Eliot into a bathtub, where he is electrocuted.
The survivors go back to the panic room for a while, but Ridley returns and infects Jason. Maxwell stabs Ridley in the head with a sword, and Debra shoots Jason. Debra watches the video on Jason's camera and sees his last message, about his happiness to be documenting the events, apparently filmed right before his attack. Debra decides to continue the video.
In the morning they awake to see the zombies who were in the pool have made their way out and were breaking into the mansion. Maxwell, Debra, and Tony lock themselves in the panic room. Inside, Debra watches the last thing Jason downloaded: A hunting party shooting zombies of people they previously left tied to trees, leaving them to die and reanimate and using them as shooting targets. After seeing this, Debra wonders whether the human race is worth saving.
Cast
- Shawn RobertsShawn Roberts-Life and career:Roberts was born in Stratford, Ontario on April 2, 1984. He started with playing the wolf in a school play of "Little Red Riding Hood" award-winning screenwriter Robert Forsythe and his friend's father helped him get a role in Emily of New Moon...
as Tony Ravello - Joshua CloseJoshua CloseJoshua Close is a Canadian actor.-Filmography:*The Pacific as Edward Sledge*The Dead Sleep as Tim*Diary of the Dead as Jason*Full of It as Kyle Plunkett...
as Jason Creed - Michelle MorganMichelle Morgan (actress)Michelle Morgan is a Canadian actress and singer.She is featured in the drama series Heartland as Amy Fleming's older sister Lou on Canadian television and in the 2008 zombie horror film Diary of the Dead...
as Debra Moynihan - Joe DinicolJoe DinicolJoe Dinicol is a Canadian actor.Dinicol was born in Stratford, Ontario, the son of acting coach and actor Keith Dinicol. He started his career as a child actor at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and has since appeared on national Canadian television series Train 48 and Rideau Hall...
as Eliot Stone - Scott WentworthScott WentworthScott Wentworth is an American actor currently living and working primarily in Canada.After starting his career in New York City, he began a long association with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in the 1985 production of The Glass Menagerie...
as Andrew Maxwell - Philip Riccio as Ridley Wilmott
- George BuzaGeorge BuzaGeorge Buza is an American-born Canadian actor who is best known for voicing Beast in the X-Men Animated Series.-Biography:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he moved to Canada as a young man and became a Canadian citizen in 1998. He appeared as Chief Jake McKenna multiple times in the TV series Honey, I...
as Biker - Amy LalondeAmy LalondeAmy Ciupak Lalonde is a Canadian-born television personality from Pelham, Ontario. She holds a degree in drama and history from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.Lalonde appears on the television channel SCREAM...
as Tracy Thurman - Tatiana MaslanyTatiana Maslany-Acting career:Maslany is one of the stars of the Canadian TV series 2030 CE and is best known in her role as the character Ghost in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed...
as Mary Dexter - R .D. ReidR. D. ReidR. D. Reid is a Canadian actor known for his portrayal of Sergeant Purley Stebbins in the A&E TV original series, A Nero Wolfe Mystery , and the series pilot, The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery . He appeared in Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead...
as Amish Farmer - Tino Monte as Newscaster
- Megan ParkMegan ParkMegan Marie Park is a Canadian actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in Charlie Bartlett and the television series The Secret Life of the American Teenager as Grace Bowman.-Life and career:...
as Francine Shane - Martin RoachMartin RoachMartin Jamie Roach is a Canadian actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles on Aaron Stone as T. Abner Hall and in the films Cube Zero, Diary of the Dead, and The Lookout.-Filmography:* Producing Parker as Dr...
as Stranger - Alan van SprangAlan van SprangAlan van Sprang is Canadian actor best known for playing Sir Francis Bryan in the series The Tudors and for appearing in the Living Dead films of George A. Romero. He has many other television and film credits.-Filmography:...
as Colonel - Matt Birman as Zombie Trooper
- Laura DeCarteret as Bree
- Janet Lo as Asian Woman
- Chris VioletteChris VioletteChris Violette is a Canadian actor. He graduated with a business diploma and flew to Europe to explore. By the time he came home, he had decided to take a few years to focus on becoming an entertainer. He started with modeling, but then started attending acting classes...
as Gordo Thorsen - Rebuka Hoye as Zombie
- Todd William Schroeder as Brody
- Alexandria DeFabiis as Zombie
- Nick Alachiotis as Fred
- George A. RomeroGeorge A. RomeroGeorge Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
as Chief of Police - Boyd BanksBoyd BanksBoyd Banks is a Canadian stand-up comedian known for doing edgy material, and actor.-Biography:Banks has appeared in such films as Bruiser , Wild Iris , Dawn of the Dead , Phil the Alien , Land of the Dead , Cinderella Man , Diary of The Dead and Pontypool...
as Armorist - Gregory NicoteroGregory NicoteroGregory Nicotero is an American special effects creator and actor. In 1988, along with Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger, he formed KNB Efx Group, a special effects studio which has gone on to work on over 400 film and television projects...
as Zombie Surgeon
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, Wes Craven
Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...
, Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...
, Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and stared in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film...
, and Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
lend their voices as newscasters on the radio. Shawn Roberts also appeared in Land of the Dead
Land of the Dead
For the disambiguation page on anything else on this topic, come here to Land of the Dead .Land of the Dead is a 2005 horror film written and directed by George A...
, making him the tenth actor to appear in at least two of Romero's zombie films, after Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and stared in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film...
, Joseph Pilato
Joseph Pilato
Joseph Pilato is an American film and voice actor. He is perhaps best known for his performance as the psychotic Captain Rhodes in the 1985 film Day of the Dead.-Early Life:...
, Tom Savini
Tom Savini
Thomas Vincent "Tom" Savini is an American actor, stuntman, director, award-winning special effects and makeup artist. He is known for his work on the Living Dead films directed by George A. Romero, as well as Creepshow, The Burning, Friday the 13th, The Prowler, and Maniac. He directed the 1990...
, Gregory Nicotero
Gregory Nicotero
Gregory Nicotero is an American special effects creator and actor. In 1988, along with Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger, he formed KNB Efx Group, a special effects studio which has gone on to work on over 400 film and television projects...
, Boyd Banks
Boyd Banks
Boyd Banks is a Canadian stand-up comedian known for doing edgy material, and actor.-Biography:Banks has appeared in such films as Bruiser , Wild Iris , Dawn of the Dead , Phil the Alien , Land of the Dead , Cinderella Man , Diary of The Dead and Pontypool...
, John Amplas
John Amplas
John Amplas is an American actor known primarily for his work with director George A. Romero. His first work with Romero was the cult classic Martin , in which he played the title role...
, Alan van Sprang, Taso N. Stavrakis
Taso N. Stavrakis
Taso Nicholas Stavrakis is an American film and television actor and stunt performer best known for his appearances in the George A. Romero films Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, and Day of the Dead...
and Romero himself. Of the aforementioned ten, Romero and Nicotero have made appearances in three films, with Alan van Sprang set to join them upon the release of the next installment, Survival of the Dead, reprising his role.
Re-establishing the Dead franchise
The film is the fifth film in Romero's Dead series and there are some notable references to earlier Romero films. One example of this is that the same news track from 19681968 in film
The year 1968 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 30 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.* November 1 - The MPAA's film rating system is introduced.-Top grossing films :- Awards :...
's Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
is used in the scene where the cast is in Ben's garage.
However, the film is not a direct sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
to any of Romero's films: the film is "a rejigging of the myth" says Romero, and is meant as a side story during the same timeframe as Night of the Living Dead. Even though the fourth film, Land of the Dead
Land of the Dead
For the disambiguation page on anything else on this topic, come here to Land of the Dead .Land of the Dead is a 2005 horror film written and directed by George A...
(2005
2005 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2005...
), was studio-produced through Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, Diary of the Dead was produced by Romero-Grunwald Productions, formed by Romero and his producer friend Peter Grunwald, with Artfire Films.
Production
Romero announced the film in August 2006 after signing a deal to write and direct it. Filming began its four-week shoot in TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
on October 19, 2006.
Despite the low production budget, somewhere around $2 million, Romero made extensive use of computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
because it allowed him to shoot the film quickly and add the effects later. Also, the film's style, as if shot with hand-held cameras, necessitated a shift from his usual method of working, which involves filming multiple camera angles and assembling scenes in the editing room. Instead, Romero filmed much of the action in long, continuous takes: "The camera was 360, so everybody was an acrobat, ducking under the lens when the camera came past you," said Romero. "The cast was great. They had a lot of theater experience. I think they could have gone from scene one all the way to the end of the movie, all in a single shot."
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
(TIFF), Midnight Madness on September 8, 2007.
According to a poll taken by the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
, it was one of the most anticipated films at the Festival. Just four days later, The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
announced that it had purchased the rights to distribute Diary of the Dead in the United States and Mexico for $2.5 million. There, Dimension Films
Dimension Films
Dimension Films is a motion picture unit currently a part of The Weinstein Company. It was formerly used as Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax Films, to produce and release genre films...
are distributing the film.
DVD and Blu-Ray releases
The DVD was released by The Weinstein Company and Genius Entertainment on May 20, 2008. Special features include a feature-length documentary, an audio commentaryAudio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
, deleted scene
Deleted scene
In Entertainment, especially the film and television industry, Deleted scenes are parts of a film removed or censored from or replaced by another scene in the final "cut", or version, of a film...
s, Behind the Scenes
Making-of
In cinema, a making-of, also known as behind-the-scenes, is a documentary film that features the production of a film or television program...
featurette, and five short films that came about via a MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
contest. It was released the same day as a new authorized edition of Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
on DVD was released by The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
.
The film was released on Region 2 on June 29, 2008, in single disc, double disc and Blu-ray editions. The double-disc and Blu-ray both contained a UK exclusive interview from Frightfest 08, and a feature length documentary entitled One for the Fire - The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The double-disc edition was released in limited, numbered steelbook packaging, and online retailer play.com
Play.com
Play Ltd., trading as Play.com, is a Jersey-based online retailer of DVDs, CDs, books, gadgets, video games, DRM-free MP3 downloads, and other electronic products, as well as clothes and accessories. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Rakuten Group....
sold an exclusive edition in a slipcase. On October 21, 2008, a Blu-ray version was released in the United States.
Reception
George Romero won a 2008 Critics Award for Diary of the Dead. The film received mixed reviews, with a slight majority being positive. Most reviewers acknowledged that Romero is still the master of the genre, and that the film was as enjoyable as Romero's previous entries in the pentalogyPentalogy
A pentalogy is a compound literary or narrative work that is made up of five distinct works, just as a trilogy is made up of three works, and a tetralogy of four...
, and that it also retained Romero's social commentary
Social commentary
Social commentary is the act of rebelling against an individual, or a group of people by rhetorical means, or commentary on social issues or society...
, including American's new-found reliance on the media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
for information and community. The film currently has a "fresh" rating of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
External links
- Review of Diary of the Dead at Internal Bleeding
- Diary of the Dead at Apple
- Diary of the Dead at MetaCriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
- Diary of the Dead at Rotten TomatoesRotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
- The First Week – A look at the first week of filming on Diary of the Dead, hosted by Special Features Producer Michael Felsher.
- Official Site UK
- Trailer, the first trailer of the film released January 10, 2008.
- Interview: George Romero on Diary of the Dead