By Eric Matthew Harvey

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A few weeks ago, George Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD opened in some theatres across America. My buddy Murphy caught the flick in Atlanta.

He walked out after almost thirty minutes.

The same weekend, my pal MC Randelhi Fresh (seriously, that’s what he goes by), saw it in Orlando.

He kind of liked it but was hard-pressed to endorse it as a must-see.

Today, DIARY OF THE DEAD has made it to Northern Florida where I’m currently stationed and of course, I have to go see it.

Opening night. Fuckin’ George A. Romero.

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Even after the lukewarm response I had to LAND OF THE DEAD, I still was expecting good things due to some glowing reviews from the critical elite who found DIARY a return to form for the king of the living dead.

Far be it from me to call a seasoned horror veteran out but…George, buddy….this is terrible. And those lofty critics are high or have become retarded.

A group of film students and their alcoholic professor making a mummy movie in the woods suddenly find themselves as stars and creators of a documentary about the dead coming back to life. Read that again.

It sounds plausible enough. It’s George Romero. So what went wrong?

I don’t know myself. Hell, I’m having a hard time writing what you’re reading because I don’t know how to really start or end this review. I have so many problems with this movie that I’m completely blocked. So let’s start with the all around horrible ensemble cast.

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The acting is atrocious, akin to a night at the community theatre. Side characters like the new African-American National Guard and the deaf Amish guy are much more interesting than the over-privileged rich kids we’re stuck with the whole time. The only person in our gang of budding filmmakers worthy of note is the professor (Scott Maxwell, “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues“), who is seen most of the time sitting in the toilet at the back of an RV.

Bad acting aside, DIARY OF THE DEAD is completely undone by one thing.

This one thing, that when you add all the other bad sums of its parts together, completely derails the whole goddamn movie.

I’ve repeated myself twice now with different words.

That’s how important this one thing is. And it is wholly George Romero’s fault.

There is no way, I repeat, NO WAY that any normal human being, under these conditions and situations, would allow such an annoying turd as Jason Creed ( Joshua Close, EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE), the film school auteur constantly taping what you see in the movie, to act the way he does and put up with his obsessive bullshit of filming everything and everyone.

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I can guarantee you that this fucking guy would have my boot up his ass 15 minutes into the end of the world if this was truly reality and of course, I was in this movie. His character is so unrealistic and maddening that it makes the whole film nearly unwatchable.

Ken Foree and Scott H. Reiniger would have broke his camera and threw him out the helicopter.

That said, there are certain parts of the film that are interesting and as said before, have to do with the characters the students run in to. But then they’re either killed or just move on and we’re back in the RV with the bastard children of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

It also doesn’t help that the “messages” of the film (which, by the way, are our obsession with the internet and its content, the failings of our current government and the callous nature in humans all new technological advances have spawned) are handled with all the subtlety of a loud fart in a Yugo. Yes I get it, and boy it stinks and damn is this car sure small and shitty. Only if we could roll down the window.

Yet at the end, I felt sad for Mr. Romero, which was why I walked out of DIARY OF THE DEAD with a feeling of indifference rather than the feeling of “Boy, that movie sucked.” I’m confused and heartbroken that the man who made such incredible and thoughtful horror films made such a terrible and ham-fisted message movie with digital gore.

If George A. Romero can’t save the horror fans, who can?