Romero Goes Back to Basics in 'Diary of the Dead'

"If Hitler were alive today, he wouldn't have to stand out in that square. He could just put out a blog, and he'd have millions of followers," Romero told The Associated Press. "It's completely uncontrolled. It's not information; it's opinion. And it's scary. You can get an audience no matter what your opinion is."

In "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead," opening in limited release Friday, footage is purported to have been filmed by survivors of a wave of zombies, then pieced together with news clips and scenes from surveillance cameras. The cameraman at one point decides he can't run to help his friends off-screen because he's busy charging camcorder batteries.

Romero, who lives in Toronto, said he made his fifth zombie film in 20 days with a $2 million budget. (A spokeswoman for the distributor said the budget was closer to $4 million.) The result is a raw, ragged tale more reminiscent of his landmark first movie, 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," than the explosion- and star-filled 2005 box office flop, "Land of the Dead."
"I could see this going toward 'Thunderdome,'" Romero said, referring to Mel Gibson's third "Mad Max" movie. "I really fled. This was not the direction I wanted to go. ... I was trying to escape and really get back to the basics, back to the roots. Do a really small, truly independent film that was in my control, entirely."

"Diary" begins with a group of college students filming a zombie movie as a school project. Through his mostly unknown actors, Romero complains about the modern state of the sub-genre he helped create:

"Zombies don't move fast!"

"Could somebody please explain to me why girls in scary movies have to fall down?"

"There's always an audience for horror ... with an underlying thread of social satire."

The lines make for good insider laughs. But one worries that the zombie king might have gotten too self-aware for his own good.

"You just wish you could lobotomize yourself, and just do a thing that's really on instinct," he said. "There's always a certain self-consciousness. And you worry about that."

Previous "Dead" movies poked at the Vietnam War, racism, consumerism, militarism and class differences. (Remakes and homages, including Zack Snyder's successful 2004 "Dawn of the Dead," have largely steered clear of overt commentary.) Romero says he wouldn't do the work if he couldn't mix in politics.

"People say you're trapped in this genre. You're a horror guy. I say wait a minute, I'm able to say exactly what I think, I'm able to talk about, comment about, take snapshots of what's going on at the time. I don't feel trapped. I feel like this is my way of being able to express myself."