George Romero will always be the father of the modern day zombie and his most recent foray into zombieland harkens back to the good old days.

Diary of the Dead brings Romero back to old fashioned film making. Gone are the seemingly acrotbatic zombies of the Dawn of the Dead remake and the plain high budgeted crap that was Land of the Dead. Instead, we follow an intrepid group of amateur film makers as they document the infancy of the zombie uprising.

There are no John Lequizamos (I am totally misspelling that by the way) and Dennis Hoppers running around. We have a group of unknown actors practically peeing their pants and serving themselves up as the soup of the day to the mindless lumbering killing machines that we affectionately call zombies.

We watch as they go from normal life to denial and disbelief and finally to acceptance. We see how their relationships change and how one man’s obsession to document the truth soon controls his life and those around him.

For the first time in Romero’s continuing mythos of zombiedome, we come face-to-face with the loss of loved ones how it effects real people. In Romero’s other movies – Night, Dawn, Day and Land – the focus is about survival and the overall theme of the picture. The characters are never three-dimensional and we don’t get to know their feelings and motivations.

In Diary of the Dead, we finally develop connections with the characters as they fight, flee and do whatever they need to do to survive.

That being said, Diary of the Dead is still a zombie movie and as such has much brain munching. The effects are of high enough quality to make it look good, but not all CGIed into oblivion. It is my opinion, and I am sure I will get a lot of flack from the purists out there, this movie is the best of all of Romero’s in connection to the zombie plague. I have seen the originals and remakes of Night, Dawn and Day and have to put this at the top.

Romero must like this one as well since it is the only of his movies to have a direct sequal. I can only hope it can live up tht level of excellence of its older and more experienced brother.