Only George Romero can mix the insatiable appetites of zombies and mass media into visually and emotionally pleasing, melt-in-your-mouth flavors of terror borne from helplessness and an uncertain future. With ostensibly empowering digital technology at their disposal, his survivors in Diary of the Dead can only use it to record, for posterity, humanity's fall from grace enveloping them, eventually pushing them into their last refuge, a panic room built for the wealthy family now lurching alongside the rest of the undead. It is the single-minded, unceasing use of the mouth (zombies munching on human chew-toys) contrasted against the unblinking public eye (documenting "the truth" to upload to YouTube) through which Romero seasons his apocalypse with the question "to what purpose for either?"

While the familiar zombie cinematic landscape is directed all too often with repetitive swatches of gory masticatory closeups and ever more agile, superhuman undead predators acting like werewolves, Romero still keeps it simple: the futile struggle between living and undead is always his focal point, and his characters--the breathing ones--struggle as best their emotional mindsets will let them. His zombies remain, as always, fearful and pitiable at the same time: pitiable because their mindless hunger can never be satisfied, but fearful as it still remains a very stress-inducing habit for the rest of frightened humanity. This time around, his dead-that-won't-die are a shade different: they are more malevolent in appearance and intent, and a bit more spry when their next meal is in biting distance.

A clue to Romero's continued mastery of the genre he slam-dunked into theaters with Night of the Living Dead is given when spoiled rich kid Ridley's family winds up in the swimming pool after becoming consumers of a different kind. The water-blurred image of his mom and dad, girlfriend, and domestic staff standing at the bottom of the pool is sublime macabre poetry only Romero would take the time to write with his camera.

We see this unfolding "Death of Death" mostly through the camera lens of Jason Creed (Joshua Close); first as he and his film school friends shoot a horror film in the desolate woods at night, and later because of his unstoppable goal to record everything. Like the zombies he encounters, he will not be deterred from this goal, although, ultimately, it may prove equally futile. Defending his unstoppable hunger to record and post everything his camera sees to the Internet, it is unclear if he's really sincere about getting the truth out, or more excited about the seventy-thousand plus hits he's getting on YouTube.

News of the plague stops the filming of the "fictional" horror movie and sends everyone to either go home or search for significant others. While Ridley races off to the safety of his family's mansion, the others drive--in their Winnebago (a poor man's Dead Reckoning from Land of the Dead)-- to the desolate university dorm to find Jason's strong-willed girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan). Once she's found, her goal is to get back home to her family. Professor Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), a melodramatic boozer mentoring his students, tags along. Maxwell sees everything in broad philosophical strokes tinged with world-weary dramatics, but he does wield a wicked bow and arrow, an elegant weapon for a more civilized time, which fits his temperament and aim well. At any point you expect to hear "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps forth in this petty pace..." from his lips; instead, he does get in a well-timed "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." And the worst of times keeps getting worse in this season of darkness.