George Romero Going Direct to Video

George Romero is scheduled to begin shooting his next film Diary of the Dead in Toronto on October 11. The film is reported to be a cross between Romero's own style of zombie film and The Blair Witch Project. A group of college students filming a horror movie stumble upon a zombie outbreak and endeavor to record the incident on film. In essence Romero will be returning to the very start of the zombie plague, with this new film taking place concurrently with the series' initial entry Night of the Living Dead. Perhaps the most surprising news, though, is that the film may go direct to video.

Romero was recently interviewed by Dreadcentral.com. Given the fact that Night of the Living Dead has often been praised for its straightforward, almost documentary style approach, Romero's comments are particularly interesting. "I want to do this from a subjective kind of view with no music," he told Dread Central. "You know, something really raw. So it's kind of a stylistic experiment, a low budget, under the radar kind of thing that's just sort of from the heart."

Considering how disappointed I was with Romero's last film, Land of the Dead, I'm glad to see him getting back on the horse so quickly--or at least the reanimated carcass thereof. While I consider myself a fan of his work, Romero is not the flawless artisan that his apologists seem to think he is. Shortly after Land of the Dead came out, a lot of posters on horror message boards were either (in my mind) unjustly praising the film or blaming its flaws on interference from Universal. Romero has made bad films before including Day of the Dead--the third entry in his zombie series--and the crushingly dull Season of the Witch, a.k.a. Jack's Wife. The notion that blame for Land of the Dead's failure resides with Romero is not inconceivable.

That said, he has also made two of the greatest horror films of all time (Night and Dawn), as well as three films I would describe as damn good (The Crazies, Martin, and Creepshow). I'm not sure if Universal or Romero is to blame for Land of the Dead turning out as badly as it did, but the evidence says he has the talent to do better. It seems obvious that Romero works best with a modest budget, so this scaled down low budget approach may be just the ticket.