Chris Violette | Through the Shattered Lens

Years ago, Kathy Waters (Emily Alatalo) escaped from her abusive husband, taking her young son Noah with her. Now, Noah (Sam Ashe Arnold) is a senior in high school and a talented composer. The school band even plays one of his compositions at a football game and everyone in the stands applaud. It reminded of those old episodes of Degrassi where Marco would write some overwrought performance piece and all the students would respond by going, “Yeah, Marco!”

Unfortunately, Kathy and Noah are not getting along as well as they used to. They’re fighting and arguing constantly. Kathy is overprotective. Noah is …. well, Noah’s kind of a creep. Noah is always complaining about how his former best friend Ethan is now more popular than he is. (Ethan plays football. Noah …. composes orchestrual music. You do the math.) Ethan is mad because Noah is now going out with Ethan’s ex-girlfriend, Maddie (Tori Barban). At one point, Tori has to duck into a bathroom so she can throw up. This is a Lifetime film and that means you don’t throw up unless you’re pregnant and trying to keep it a secret.

Kathy is a real estate agent. That’s not a surprise as selling houses is right up there with owning a bakery or being a mommy vlogger as far as careers in Lifetime movies are concerned. One morning, she gets a notification that someone has entered one of the empty houses that she’s selling. Going to the house, she discovers the remains of a wild party. She also finds Ethan dead in a nearby shed.

Noah becomes the number one suspect. Soon, someone is spray-painting “MURDERER” across the front door of Kathy’s house. Kathy’s friends are refusing to talk to her. Detective Summers (Puja Uppal) is asking questions. Noah claims that he’s innocent but even Kathy begins to have her doubts after she discovers just how angry Noah can get. Noah’s father was abusivie. Did Noah inherit the violence gene?

As I mentioned earlier, Noah is kind of a creep and it is easy to imagine circumstances in which he could be guilty. The fact that Lifetime has lately featured several films featuring violent teenage boys also might lead one to suspect that Noah’s the killer. Well, fear not. This is a traditional Lifetime film and that means that Noah is not the murderer. Instead, he’s just an obnoxious teenager who needs to treat his mom with more respect. I will not spoil the movie by revealing the identity of the killer. That said, you should be able to guess who it is because there’s not that many people in the movie.

“Everyone Has Something To Hide!” the title announces and, as far as this film is concerned, I guess that’s true. Considering that Noah’s a musician, they could have made just a few adjustments to the script and called this movie While My Guitar Gently Weeps. As for the film itself, it suffers from a lack of likable characters. (When I say that Noah’s a creep, I mean he is really a creep!) But the film does deserve credit for fully embracing the melodrama. The film has it’s flaws but it still held my attention for 88 minutes.

I have to admit that I was a little bit hesitant about watching the 2007 film, Diary of the Dead.

It wasn’t that I don’t like zombie movies. In fact, it was the complete opposite. I love zombie films and Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorites. George Romero, of course, went on to make several sequels to Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead are certifiable horror classics. However, I had heard mixed things about the two zombie films that Romero directed after Land of the Dead. Seeing as how Diary of the Dead was Romero’s second-to-last film before he passed away in 2017, I was worried that I would watch the film and discover that I hated it. I didn’t want experience anything that would tarnish Romero’s cinematic legacy. It didn’t help my expectations that Diary of the Dead is a found footage film and the conventions of the found footage genre tend to get on my last nerve.

(Seriously, nothing makes me throw a shoe at a screen quicker than the sound of someone in a horror movie saying, “Are you filming this?”)

But you know what?

I did watch Diary of the Dead and it’s actually not bad. It may not reach the heights of Romero’s other zombie films but it’s definitely a worthwhile companion piece. It opens with news reports about the start of the zombie apocalypse, meaning that Diary of the Dead is meant to take place at roughly the same time as Night of the Living Dead. (Never mind that Diary of the Dead is full of references to YouTube and blogs and other things that most people probably couldn’t even imagine when Night of the Living Dead first came out.) A group of film students are in the woods, filming a terrible mummy movie when they first hear reports of the dead coming back to life. Some say that there’s no way it could be true. Others say that something must be happening but surely the dead aren’t actually coming back to life. They soon discover that the dead have indeed returned.

We follow the students as they travel across Pennsylvania, trying to find a place that’s safe from the Dead and discovering that there’s literally no such place left in America. Along the way, they also discover that the government has no intention of telling the people the truth about what’s happening. In fact, a group of national guardsmen turn out to be just as dangerous as the zombies. In their efforts to survive, the students are forced to rely on an underground network of bloggers and video makers.

Diary of the Dead has all of the usual zombie mayhem that you would expect from a film like this but, at the same time, it’s got a lot more on its mind than just the dead returning to life. Much as he did with Land Of The Dead, Romero uses Diary of the Dead to comment on the state of America under the Patriot Act. With the government using the zombie apocalypse as an excuse to suspend civil liberties and increase their own power, the film’s characters are forced to depend on new and independent information sources. It’s not hard to see the parallel that Romero is making between the War on the Living Dead and the War on Terror. As well, making all of the characters film students allows for some discussion about whether or not horror films should simply concentrate on being scary or whether they should also attempt to deal with real-world issues. The film leaves little doubt where Romero came down on that issue.

On the negative side, Diary of the Dead struggles a bit to overcome the limitations of its low budget and none of the characters are as compelling as Ben in Night of the Living Dead or Fran in Dawn of the Dead. At times, you find yourself wishing that Diary of the Dead featured just one actor who was as into their role as Duane C. Jones or Ken Foree were in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, respectively. But Diary of the Dead still features enough zombies and enough of Romero’s trademark political subtext to be an acceptable addition to Romero’s vision of the apocalypse.