With a story mixing elements of "The Blair Witch Project" and the long-running "Dead" series, the film is about a group of college students shooting a horror movie in the woods and stumbling upon a real zombie uprising. When the onslaught begins, they seize the moment as any good film students would, capturing the undead in a "cinema verite" style that causes more than the usual production headaches.

The easiest way to describe "Diary Of The Dead" to anyone unfamiliar with Romero's credits, would be to call it The Blair Witch Zombie Project, infused with a healthy dose of "Enemy Of The State" surveillance panic and some of the humour in "From Dusk Till Dawn".

It's nowhere as dumb as the synopsis sounds, that's for certain. There's a lot of self-reflection on the horrors that happen when public information is questionable and how different people deal with disasters, although it might not be as heavy or immediately relatable as Nazi bystander guilt or early Anwar ruckus. This socio-political commentary is what makes "Diary Of The Dead" a somewhat interesting entry to the genre. Most people run, some manage to hide and even less manage to take control. It's a zombie attack, told through a hand camera (or two) as a story about the total disintegration of law and order.

That's the serious stuff. However the movie still needs to move faster than the zombies in it if it's going to be make a good watch. In this department, zombies getting stuck at the bottom of a swimming pool was rather fun. An English professor from Portsmouth who works a bow and arrow "because it always seemed friendlier" also lends some variety. Killing with an I.V. stand found in a hospital (this might have been cut for excessive gore) makes up for the customary New Way Of Killing A Zombie in every movie of the genre.

In any case, the main grunt is that the characters aren't terribly gorgeous to look at and neither do they say the most interesting things. The editing is largely responsible for letting go of that zombie fear and turning the whole affair slightly tedious, especially nearing the end.

"Diary Of The Dead" is precisely what Romero probably intended but it won't really drive anyone crazy about it.