From legendary frightmaster George A. Romero comes "one of the most daring, hypnotic and absolutely vital horror films of the past decade" (fangoria.com). Romero continues his influential "Dead" series, this time focusing on a terrified group of college film students who record the pandemic rise of flesh-eating zombies while struggling for their own survival. Intensely gruesome and relentlessly grisly - fueled by the director's signature realistic special effects - Diary of the Dead is must-see horror that "is Romero at his finest" (bloody-disgusting.com).

George Romero has always come up with new ways of treating his zombies, and Diary of the Dead is no exception: Romero keeps his dead fresh, with an original approach to the undying subject. This one purports to be the video record of a group of young people who are shooting a low-budget horror movie when the terror strikes: corpses begin re-animating, intent on chewing the living. Our heroes trek across Pennsylvania, encountering the staggering zombies as they go. Other pieces of video are incorporated, which gives Romero a chance at some great set-pieces, including the brilliant opening sequence, a live local-TV feed that goes horribly, horribly wrong, and a home-video tape from a family birthday party, where the party clown turns out to be a dead ringer. All of Romero's Dead films are political, and this one's no exception, with a stark view of the way things are today; it doesn't offer the Hawksian heroics of the survivors in Dawn of the Dead or Land of the Dead for comfort, just a group of bickering, shocked youths. There's too much talk about the detachment of watching things through a lens, but in general this is a bracing, intelligent movie. Plus, there's some excellent splatter. --Robert Horton