Normally I don’t review movies on this blog, unless if a really good one comes along that I feel has a message worth sharing. This was the case with George Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Some unknown force is bringing the dead back to life, and they want to eat people and spread whatever reanimates them. You kill them by shooting them in the head. Sounds a lot like Resident Evil, but I think this one tells a far more gripping story.

You see the whole movie from the perspective of several cameras, edited into a final production, theoretically at some point past the end of the movie. If the events in Diary of the Dead actually took place, this is what the video you downloaded after the time would look like.

It starts out in some unknown forest, with a bunch of students shooting a horror movie for a college project. News comes in about the dead coming to life, and the lead cameraman (Jason Creed) wants to return to the college campus to fetch his girlfriend. The rest of the students tag along, and things start getting interesting.

The point of the movie isn’t so much the horror, or the dead coming to life, but about the factual, raw reporting thereof. The underlying theme is citizen journalism vs. mainstream reporting, and plenty of mention is made of sites like YouTube and MySpace, as well as blogs as a whole.

What I love about the movie is that it’s about as real as this sort of thing’s going to get. There’s a point where the students enter a hospital, and several reanimated corpses come at them. They have to shoot the dead, but there’s very little dramatism around it.

There’s even a point where Jason’s girlfriend (Deborah) gets home, only to find her mother and little brother have died and reanimated, and her reactions were incredibly realistic. Including the point where the professor nails her little brother to the wall with an arrow through his head. It’s very easy to forget that this is a movie, and treat it like an actual documented occurence. In fact, should you watch it, I suggest that you do.

One of the other things that really stand out is the detachment Jason experiences throughout the movie. Near the end, one of the students - reanimated - attempts to attack a girl, and Jason does nothing to help, instead making sure he documents the whole thing. When you see things through a lens, you become detached - a fact most of us need to be reminded of, from time to time.

Diary of the Dead is by far one of the best movies I’ve seen yet. Advisable only if you have a strong stomach :)