FRESHMEAT

DIARY OF THE DEAD MAY BE THE SUMMATION OF

GEORGE A, ROMERO'S ZOMBIE CYCLE (AT LEAST UNTIL
THE NEXT INSTALLMENT) BY ROBIN WOOD

28 I FILM COMMENT I January-February 2008

L RETREAT AND ADVANCE
FROM THE BEGINNING, GEORGE ROMERO'S LIVING
Dead movies have been at once mesmerizing, tan-
talizing, and oddly frustrating. One always has
the sense that, beneath the surface shock/horror
level, they are making a statement about . . .
what, exactly? What do the Living Dead repre-
sent? Our culture, what we used to think of as
our civilization, human life itself in all its confu-
sions and unsatisfactoriness? All of the above?
When you try to pin it down, something always
gets in the way, refuses to fit, resists the meanings
we try to impose. Of one thing we may be sure:
the films are not about "punishment for sin."
Romero's universe is certainly not a Christian one
(the occasional religious references are always
negative). Rather, we have an accidental universe,
an unholy mess, an experiment not even from the
familiar mad scientist but from some strange,
blind, confused demiurge that didn't know what
it was doing but, in its blind fumblings, produced
a species that may be responsible for the death of
all life on this planet within the next few hundred
years. There are signs that the fifth of Romero's
Living Dead movies may also be the last (though
he has always surprised us, and perhaps himself):
it has the feel and appearance of a summation,
opening (like the original film) with the first
"undead" returning to life, ending on a direct,
desperate challenge to the audience, as if
demanding our own summation.
Looking back over the five films, one is struck
hy an inherent contradiction: one cannot believe
that they were planned as a sequence, each having
its own individual characteristics (there are no
carry-overs from one film to the next). Yet the
more one reflects upon them the more one is
struck by an inherent logic in the overall struc-
ture, a logic confirmed by the remarkable new
film: the first four in the series cover and demol-
ish, systematically, the central structures of what
we still call our civilization, establishing Romero
as the most radical of all horror directors.
Night of the Living Dead: The nuclear family (the hasis of our
culture): the warring brother and sister of the opening, the miserahle,
squabbling parents and child, the "young couple" (the funire nuclear
family) of the midsection. All are killed and eaten, the centerpiece
being tbe little girl stabbing her mother to death with a buikler's
trowel, then devouring her father. The zombiestiie living dead,
dead but sdl! livingare Ktablished here as our past; the films are
about the impossibility of escaping from it.
Dawn of the Dead: Consumerism, on which our culture's econ-
omy depends: free riches in the shopping mall. It will always be the
most popular of the series because it's the least disturbingcon-
sumerism is a relatively superficial aspect of our world. It's also the
only film in which the couple (hut not the romantic couple, not
another nuclear family} are permitted to escape, even if the escapie is
to nowhere. (The tropical island refuge of Day is clearly coded as a
wish-fulfillment fantasy.)
Day of the Dead: The militaryour guardians and defenders
revealed as utterly useless and objeaionable, their particularly
obnoxious captain literally torn apart by the zomhies.
Land of the Dead: Capitalism itself, with the brilliant casting of
Dennis Hopper as its supreme embodiment, Easy Rider maturing
into its most monstrous tycoon.
Diary of the Dead: Both a return to origins (the first zomhies, an
entirely new and different starting point, but again witb the nuclear
family as the origin) and an advance, with young and fresh new
actors as the student film crew protagonists.
A second substructure uniting tbe series has proved of equal con-
sistency: the role of black charaaers.
Night of the Living Dead: The central figure, the "outsider" hero
with no apparent family ties, the sole character who survives the
zombies {only to he gunned down by the rednecks).
Dawn of the Dead: The most intelligent, responsible, and aware of
the tbree male characters, allowed to escape with the woman.
Day of the Dead: Essentially (of the five) the "woman's picture," but
Romeros female protagonist is linked strongly to her black lover.
Land of the Dead: Tintalizingly, the bint Romero gives us of tbe
black zombie who (alone) appears to be developing an embryonic
awareness and capacity for thought. Rasbty, I had assumed that if there
were to be another Living Dead movie he or his counterpart would be
the central f^ute. Was Romero defeated by the obvious prohlems of
spontaneously developing thinking zombies? But instead we have...
Diary of the Dead: The group of organized and intelligent blacks who
seem closest to controlling and surviving the seemingly uiicoTitrolIable
siuiation. If there is, after aU, a sixth film, will they he central to it?
The privileged position of the black chiiraaers (in all thefilms)relies
on two features, one It^cal, the other not: as blacks they are outsiders,
with a history of oppression, cruelty, and mat^ialization; they are also,
in Romero's movies, unattached, free of the constraints and demands of
the nuclear family; they are also always and only male. This gives them
a freedom of vision and action from which the wliite characters are
barred, though the total absence of black women makes tlieir future
somewhat problematic.
Most seem to agree tbat Land is the weakest of the first four films
(Hopper and the black zombie apart, its characters are not very inter-
esting, and too much of the first half merely repeats the now-familiar
slaughter). Diaiy, though it lacks rhe controlled and compressed
intensity of Night and the bright colors and energy of Daitm, may
prove to be the series' supreme achievement, Romero's most inclusive
January-February 2008 i FILM COMMENT I 29
statement. Its premise is brilliant. In a gambit of charaaeristic
aplomb, Romero establisbes that he bas no responsibility for tbe film
we are watcbing: tbe opening segment bas been downloaded from tbe
Intemet, and what follows is the work of a group of film students
from the University of Pittsburgh, and in particular of an aspiring
young filmmaker called Jason Oeed [Josh Close), introduced direa-
ing his own student horror movie in which a mummy pursues a
young woman through the woods at night. ^X'hen the first news of the
zombie attacks comes in, Jason is quite ready to leap at the opportu-
nity to make the abrupt transition to a "reality" movie. We are not
permitted to see Jason clearly until well into the film, as he is wield-
ing the handheld camera, blocking bis face; his film's title is not Diary
of the Dead but The Death of Death.
Romero's decision to attribute his film to a group of students is a
masterstroke. The handheld camera continuously underlines the
sense of the instability of a world in which nothing is reliable, anyone
may uim out to be a zombie. Detacbed (at least partly) from the
nuclear family, looking ahead to a still undefined future, witb a cer-
tain freedom of cboice, the young people are the ideal protagonists
for a Romero movie. Even in the midst of the pervasive horrors, the
constant reminders of tbe handheld camera, the youthful spontaneity
and emotional openness of the group, also combine to give thefilma
surprising freshness and exhilaration that's lacking in the previous
films (and especially in Land)., while tbe group's relative innocence
gives tbe film an unexpeaed and toucbing poignancy
^X'hatever Romero had in mind when he began, his ambitions, the
seriousness of his commitment, bave developed and revealed them-
selves well beyond the expectations we bring to a genre movie. For
the record, Diary is the first of his films that has made me cry, no
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doubt partly because the charaaers, with their youthful enei^ and
thirst for life, remind me of the students in my graduate film studies
courses: they may not be facing zombies but they wiii also be strug-
giing to survive witbin a reientlessly disintegrating culture. Romero
never idealizes his young people. Jason's motivation, for example, is
repeatedly called into question, notably by Debra (Michelle Morgan):
is his determination to continue filming through all tbe horrors cal-
lously self-serving, or justified by an authentic desire to establish truth?
Botb seem present, but Debra's final acceptance of him, and her desire
to continue his work after his death, acknowledge a degree of integrity.
II. STRUCTURE: A ROAD MOVIE WITH FIVE STOPS
Tlie film's opening segmentnews footage downloaded by Debra from
the Intemetshows the first case of tbe dead coming back as zombies:
a nuclear family in which the father has committed suicide after killing
his wife and son, inverting the central episode of Night In which a young
girl kills and eats ber parents. The ensuing action, beginning haphaz-
ardly with a panicky joumey of uncertain destination, inevitably takes
the form of retum to the illusory safety of family homes. Debra sums it
up: "You spend so much time resenting your parents . . . but as soon as
the shit hits the fan, the only place you want tt) go is home."
Diary of the Dead is Romero's first "road movie," the last of the five
Living Dead films lieing in strongest possible contrast with the claus-
trophobic first (in which the continually warring characters are trapped
by the zombies in a single bouse). Its essential progress (a joumey with
constantly diminishing returns) isfi'omthe open road to Debra's final
descent into the mansion's panic r(K)m, from wbich we know she will
never emei^e. Three of the five stops are for help, security, and sbeltei;
none of whicb materialize: tbe hospital where tbey take Mary (Taiiana
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Maslany) after her artcniprcd suicide, and riu- rwo homes (Dehras,
Ridley's) wliere they hope to find safety. All prove illusory; Mary,, the
gentlest and youngest of the group, shoots herself because, as the dri-
ver of the group's camper van, she has killed three people who may not
all have been zombies. She dies, becomes a zombie, and has ro be exe-
cuted. Debra's parents are already zombies, and Ridley (Philip Ricdo),
unbeknownst to the group, has already been bitten, and hence may die
and txcome one at any moment. And we must remember that family
members, when they die, don't merely become zombies, they eat each
orher: a neat Romero-esque definition of nuclear family relationships.
Tlie other rwo stops/episodes (the Amish farmei; the militant black
group) are stumbled upon accidentally and provide temporary, tran-
sient help. The sequence of the confrontation with the black group is
especially intriguing as it significantly develops the roles of blacks in the
previous films. In contrast to the pervasive hysteria and chaos, tiiey are
organized, and the film suggests that what has made this possible is
Proud Supporter of the
Film Society of Lincoln Center
their marguialization within the white world. As their leader tells
Debra, "For the first time in our lives, we got rhe powerIxxrause
everyone else left." Debra's strength impresses him: he tells her "I think
you're a lot like me." One has the sense that their mutual respect could
point ahead to a new development of Romero's pervasive interest in
black charaaers, if we are to have further installments...
I wish Romero had ended his film wirh rhe withdrawal of
Debra, Professor Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), and Tony Ravello
(the other surviving student) into the panic room, with Mary's
promise that "I'm going to finish his movie. There's got to be
more." Ir expresses rhe bleak hope that Jason's Him may be of value
if anyone survives the zombiesan assertion one can take as
Romero's hint of a possible sixth film.
T don't understand rhe brief posrscript, introduced by Debra as
"the last film Jason shot." Its central image is certainly among the
most appalling ever produced within fictional cinema, but the per-
petrators of the desecration it depicts are a couple of irrelevant red-
necks who played no part in the film. Debra's question ("Are we
worth saving? You tell me") has already been answered by the film
with a resounding "Yes!" insofar as it applies to the charactersthe
studentswithin the narrative, and to Debra's own assertion. I con-
fess to bewilderment...
The original Night of the Living Dead was welcomed or repudi-
ated as a schlock horror film; Diary will probably be welcomed as
an art-house movie. But what's in a name? Let us salute a great and
audacious filmmaker...
ROBIN WOOD is working on a hook on Michael Haneke to be pub-
lished next year by Wayne State University Press.
January-February 2008 I FILM COMMENT I 31