‘Diary of the Dead’ and George A. Romero’s Formal Self-Awareness

Enter 2007’s Diary of the Dead, a film as deeply political as its predecessors, but characterized by a uniquely pronounced formal self-awareness. After Land saw major studio development under the banner of Universal Pictures, Diary finds Romero reevaluating the kind of micro-budget conditions that produced Night of the Living Dead. It calls attention to the sensibilities that have overwhelmingly haunted mainstream horror since the release of two genre-shaking titles in the late 1990s: Wes Craven’s Scream and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Project. Romero taps into the postmodern auto-critique of the former, and the subjective “found footage” aesthetic of the latter.

Read my full Film Stage debut, “Diary of the Dead and George A. Romero’s Formal Self-Awareness” here.