Land of the Dead, Romero’s return to zombies after twenty years, was a full-blooded action/adventure with Upstairs, Downstairs satire, but without the bite of the original Dead trilogy.

News that he would return to the well yet again with the spoofy sounding Diary of the Dead was met with resignation, but this new film is more impressive than its studio approved predecessor.

Final year film student Jason Creed (Close) must put his mummy horror film on hold when the dead suddenly refuse to rest in peace and begin attacking the living. Creed and his cast and crew are soon packed into a Winnebago to find his girlfriend’s family, recording events on the road as the unthinkable happens and society crumbles.

The past Dead films tackled Vietnam (Night of the Living Dead), rampant consumerism (Dawn of the Dead), the nuclear arms race (Day of the Dead) and class (Land of the Dead).

With Diary of the Dead Romero produces a time capsule snapshot of modern fears: terrorism, immigration, pandemics, unreliable governments (the White House spins the zombies back to life), and Iraq and Katrina, all documented You Tube style.

And when it comes to the audience-friendly ketchup, Romero uses gore the way Picasso used paint. Colourful SFX, courtesy of latex wizard Greg Nicotero, splash across the screen as Creed and his crew soon pick up the “shoot ‘em in the head” creed.

The inventive violence provides more handy hints for surviving the zombie apocalypse: defibrillators applied to the temples will spectacularly blind the undead but not render them immobile, sulphuric acid to the cranium is an ultimate slow-burn method, and don’t mess with the Amish.

An enthusiastic cast are partially up to the challenge, but some of the thesping belongs on a Straight-to-Video shelf. Top honours go to Morgan as Josh’s girlfriend Debra, a no-nonsense horror heroine battling flesh eaters and a dime-store philosophy voiceover not even Cate Blanchett could bring to life.

The movie within a movie device apes MTV-style reality shows, even though it’s suspiciously well-framed for a documentary and hardly original: years before Blair Witch the notorious Cannibal Holocaust was doing the same thing.

But, a run-in with a Black Power militia and a lawless National Guard, a stunning scene-setting opening and a disturbing Jackass style closer are gut-punching examples of no-fat storytelling, making the prospect of another Romero undead flick cause for celebration.

Rob Daniel