Burning Yourself Down

by James Hansen

Given the recent events in Texas, Breck Eisner’s The Crazies initially seems full of restrained timeliness. Something is wrong in Ogden Marsh. The small-town has been filled with something causing several residents to act strangely. A man saunters onto a local baseball field during a game with a loaded shotgun. Another locks his wife and child in a closet before lighting his house on fire. Local law enforcement – notably the sheriff, David, and his deputy, Russell – scrambles for answers as the town begins to implode home by home. Ah yes, small town America is as crazy as ever. And what could be the cause? This would-be timeliness vanishes pretty quickly with a sloppy narrative and even messier director. Unfortunately, The Crazies follows the fate of the town and burns itself down entirely too quickly.


This premise, slightly reworked from George Romero’s 1973 film of the same name, fits the bill for standard horror fare, yet Eisner and his production team instill in the opening sequences a taught atmosphere creepily mimicking the quickly dissolving population. The first 20 minutes are a wonderful balance of hard and soft light, noise and stirring silence, and craft a dangerous aura that one can only hope is sustained throughout. But just as the narrative’s zombie-fied residents and baffled authority set up a strong base for the “small-town on the brink of nothingness” dilemma, Eisner and screenwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright pull the rug out from under their own first-act momentum by abandoning Ogden Marsh and heading for larger power struggles between the individual and the government, as well as internal debate, that only feels confused and half-hearted. After about an hour, it becomes impossible not to ask, “Where in the hell did the movie go?”

The Crazies shifts gears moving away from the town and into a government-run facility before our sheriff and deputy break out, wander around, go back to the government-run facility, and then walk around some more. Losing interest in the town, The Crazies tacks on story after story of David, Russell, and Co. trying to run away from...something...and defeat the...zombies?... government?... a disease?...their self worth? Trouble of it is, there is never a sense of what the characters are trying to do as they cycle around looking for “answers” amidst a narrative that never posed any questions. Instead, the characters just wander, as does the film, without the faintest purpose ultimately recalling shoddy Romero fare that has been placed in a broken blender and liquified with half-assed versions of The Road and Gerry.


Perhaps too indebted to Romero or not bold enough to move away from Romero’s obsession with trapping characters in buildings and having them escape with large vehicles (hard to know how much influence Romero had with an executive producer), The Crazies screenplay traps itself in a narratological no-man’s land. Of course, Romero, at his best, knows how to work through what he has created. The same cannot be said for Eisner and his team. After Ogden Marsh becomes totally incidental, maybe unintentionally, The Crazies pulls out a small bag of tricks to keep it moving (warning: secondary characters introduced an hour into a horror movie have no chance for survival) but it just becomes canned, flat, and crazzzy boring. After it gets lost, there is no finding its way back. In destroying its own ability to reflect on Ogden Marsh in a movie distinctly about small-town mania and destruction (you can really tell how misunderstood the material is with the inclusion of an abysmal coda) The Crazies locks itself in a closet and lights its house on fire. But if we know the house is empty, then why bother watching?

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Not Funny Enough, Zombie Man

With his most recent zombie flick installment, Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero has come incredibly close to diving headfirst into straight-up comedy. Sadly, he didn’t quite get to the bottom of the sea of hilarity. Although Diary features ample self-reflexive parody and general genre spoofing, as well as a crazy badass deaf Amish guy whose role in the film I will save for the reader to discover, the film is hampered by its momentary lapses into nearly unendurable pretension and ill-conceived social commentary, which is quite unusual for the typically sharp Romero.

Diary’s set-up echoes that of this year’s Cloverfield: a group of twentysomethings (this time film students initially making a student film) become hounded by an individual amongst them, Jason (Joshua Close) who is hell-bent on recording the end of the world as it happens. As revealed in the film’s introductory voice-over, Jason has died and his surviving girlfriend, Debra (Michelle Morgan), has finished his documentary of the earth’s zombiefication, entitled The Death of Death, which she then plays for the audience, making super-serious pseudo-philosophical commentary throughout the film, clashing with the film’s generally consistent parodic sensibility.

During Romero’s introduction to Diary of the Dead before a special midnight screening at Nashville’s treasured Belcourt Theatre, which I attended gleefully, Romero maintained the comic tone that dominates much of the film amidst his humble sincerity. Romero noted that, contrary to Land of the Dead (2005), Diary is “a film from the heart” in which he tried to discover whether or not he had the “chops and stamina to do a little film again” and the legendary writer-director repeatedly expressed his gratitude for the enthusiasm Diary has been received with, noting that he would have made the film “even if it went straight to DVD.” When Romero began fielding questions from the audience, shit got hysterical.

One audience member stood up, gesturing toward his amputated arm and asked if he could be an extra in Romero’s next film since it would be easy to special effect an arm-ripping scene with him. Everyone got a good chuckle out of the unexpected humor proposed by the man, who laughed quite a bit himself, particularly when Romero retorted “I’ve shot my last few films in Canada and zombies in Canada are unionized,” referring to the regulations on extras, and expressing regret that the “$1 and a cheeseburger” policy of paying extras isn’t practical any longer.

The conversation then shifted to talk of Romero’s childhood fears, leading him to comment, “I was frightened that when I died, Jesus was going to kick my ass,” adding, “He was the first zombie, actually,” prompting a roar of laughter from the crowd. The raucous humor was further enlivened when a few audience members shouted, “Then, why do we eat his flesh?” and “Why do we drink his blood?” Romero, smiling from ear to ear, then declared, “This guy’s spun this thing right on its head!”

Following Romero’s standing ovation as he left the stage, the film began – starting its oft-hilarious journey toward the demystification of the media and of cinema, via a zombie apocalypse. Diary employs many of the well-worn tactics of cinematic derangment, a la Jean-Luc Godard and Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929). The film’s opening shot begins with a new cameraman onto his camera – from the camera’s perspective – immediately forcing the audience to realize that it is watching through the first-person eye of a camera, which it will throughout the film. In addition to its constant references to the presence of the camera, including a detailed description of the camera used to shoot the film-within-a-film, The Death of Death (and presumably the actual film), much like the description read aloud during the credits of Godard’s Contempt (1963). The film’s use of absurdly bombastic and stereotypical music also echoes Contempt’s melodramatic and overly-sensuous score and is well-manipulated by Romero. Another tool of inciting awareness of the film’s fictionality in the audience borrowed from Godard, is the jump-cut, which in Diary has become what may be called the “glitch-cut,” in which the first person camera gets scrambled, thrown, or turned off, for dramatic or comedic effect.


Romero’s most audacious move is his revelation of the film’s editing process, as is masterfully depicted in Vertov’s aforementioned silent masterpiece. In one scene during which the group has a chance to rest at the compound of an African-American militarist group, Jason basically sprints to a computer in order to edit and upload some of the footage he has shot to Youtube. He is shown picking his shots and dropping them in their slots, basically creating the film the audience has been watching. Exciting because of its deconstruction of the cinematic product, the scene epitomizes Romero’s goal of attacking the media and stripping it of its power. But is it really necessary in the Youtube age? Romero seems to think so, and he iterates this with obnoxious emphasis.

Before attacking Diary’s irritating moments of seriousness, due must be given to its lightness. When the audience first meets the film’s group of protagonists, they are filming a low-budget horror film about a mummy. Referencing and mocking Romero’s penchant for social commentary, as is displayed in his milestones Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978), one of the students sardonically comments that the The Death of Death should have “an underlying thread of social satire.” Additionally, Romero inserts humorous statements on zombie movement, as one of the characters comments to the actor playing the mummy that he can’t run after the girl, claiming, “You’re a corpse; if you run fast, your ankles will snap off.” The parallel scene near the film’s finale of the first filming scene is exceedingly comical (but shan’t be detailed for the sake of preserving the plot!) and the sequence featuring the deaf Amish guy is one of the most knee-slap-inducing bits of cinema I’ve seen in a long time. Watching Diary of the Dead, I kept wishing that Romero would just make a straight-up comedy. I have a feeling it would be marvelous.


When Romero did stray from his comic tone, eyes rolled all over the theatre. Although Diary does maneuver through some racial and gender commentary during the scenes involving the militarist group, as well as tackling the downside of isolation during the film’s finale, when dealing with the role of the camera in society, the film becomes quite hamfisted. Repeatedly, like an ideological bludgeon, the concept of the camera as a weapon (zing!) is bashed into the head of the viewer, such as when a frustrated Debra turns the camera on Jason and asks, “You see how it feels?” The exploitative possibilities of the camera are underlined fifteen times by Romero, particularly during a scene where the group must battle zombies in a hospital and Jason is told, “Don’t try to speak, just shoot,” leading him to point his camera with precision, rather than use the gun that is the intended object of the command. After the students’ cynical professor, Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) blows some zombies away, he gives the gun to someone else, explaining, “It’s too easy to use.” Almost immediately afterward, Debra hands the camera back to Jason, also explaining, “It’s too easy to use.”

This is how I imagine the thought process behind the scene: “Get it? It’s like a metaphor and shit. ‘Shoot,’ do you get it? Lemme make sure you get it. Hmmm. I’ll just use the same damned metaphor over and over and milk it to the point that you want to vomit. Then you’ll definitely get it, and you’ll think I’m edgy and clever. Fuck subtlety. I’ll just punch you in the stomach. You’ll be amazed!” Sadly, Romero does just that, harping on the violence-of-the-camera issue with the tact of a 13-year-old. It’s a tragic day when I have to call George A. Romero “didactic,” but he is that, if nothing else, during the disgustingly clunky portions of Diary.

On the whole, Diary is watchable, but definitely not as rewatchable as Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. It seems Romero might still be getting his groove back after returning to the zombie genre, but hopefully he will be able to attain the perfection of Dawn once more, striking a balance between horror, comedy, and social satire. Maybe he’ll tie his heavy hands a little better next time.

by Brandon Colvin

***Photos of George Romero were taken by Jackie Clarkson***

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