A group of young film students who travel across Pennsylvania in hopes of finding refuge at their friend's secluded mansion run into real-life zombies while filming a horror movie of their own.
One needn't be a splatter junkie to miss Romero's marshalling of action across multiple theaters. But the maestro finds a way to slay intellectual and aesthetic antsiness with the same bullet.
Trenchantly implicates the media into the ongoing apocalypse that in previous Dead chapters already included family, capitalism, the military, class divides
Hardly top-drawer Romero. In fact, it may be his worst zombie film yet. But even bad Romero is a far sight more interesting than the coolly sadistic guts-porn that currently passes for mainstream horror.
For Romero, someone who still retains respect and admiration for previous work, Diary of the Dead points to the realization that it is time to close the door on zombie movies and move to other horror subjects.
