Horror filmmaking is supposed to be a young person's game, but 68-year-old genre legend George A. Romero has never played by the rules. And he's not about to start now.

The director who launched his career with "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968 returns to his roots for his latest, "Diary of the Dead"—the freshest and freakiest horror film in years.

A sequel in title only, "Diary" ditches the mythology Romero built up over three "Dead" sequels—1978's "Dawn of the Dead," 1985's "Day of the Dead" and 2005's "Land of the Dead"—and starts from scratch with the premise of the recently deceased waking up with a taste for human flesh.

This time the story unfolds from the point of view of a group of college film students who go from making a scripted horror project to documenting the "real life" carnage that unfolds around them.

Horror films with lead characters documenting their own (potential) demise have been made before—"The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" mined box office gold from the concept—but never by a filmmaker as savvy as Romero. He makes "Diary of the Dead" an exciting extension of a beloved franchise, a savage commentary on the age of Internet exploitation and a gory, funny, spine-tingling fright flick.

Metromix caught up with the director at the Sundance film festival (where "Diary" screened in the "Park City at Midnight" section) to find out what inspired this unique vision.

A lot of people will probably assume “Diary of the Dead” is a sequel to the previous “Dead” movies, what made you decide to go in another direction and start fresh?
How much time you got? [laughs] I've done four of these zombie movies before. Even though I liked “Land of the Dead,” I found it getting a little too “Thunderdome.” I had a feeling like...

Where does it go next?
Yeah. If I'm gonna keep doing this they're gonna want it to be bigger, with more action, and that's not what the films were ever about. I wanted to back off of that. This one would be about film students—they have a camera, they're out shooting a school project, the shit hits the fan and they start documenting it. That really was the idea.

Then, as usual, you have a lot of political and social commentary to go with the gore.
All of my zombie films have grown out of observations of what was happening in the world. To me, that's what they're about. Zombies? It could be a hurricane, storm, landslide, whatever you want. It's a disaster. The stories are about how humans react to it, fail to react to it, react improperly to it.

And this movie shows how people react in a society driven by media and technology.
I was captured by the blogosphere, the emerging media and how everyone is captured by it. Everyone wants to be a reporter and is being invited to be a reporter. You see something happening outside your window, shoot it and put it online. You get a blog and if you have any kind of charisma you can suddenly have three million followers. It strikes me as being quite dangerous.

Were there any particular blogs or web videos that served as inspirations?
No, it was just the whole idea. I had a website that I used to attend dutifully. I'd get on and answer questions. For the first several months it was great, then it took a turn. People started fighting and insulting each other. That was the thing that most directly made me realize how connected we all are and how dependent we’ve become on that contact.

If you could’ve made this story about anything why go back to zombies?
Beats the shit out of me. It's my ticket to ride. If they nuke Philadelphia, I could throw zombies out there and get a movie deal.

I think this is the best of the series since "Dawn of the Dead." There's so much to it.
It's overloaded. That's what I was worried about, it's almost like it has too much.

Too much social commentary?
I think so, when I see it now. I think I maybe went a bit far. Maybe some people don't notice it. I always worry about it. There are real 9/11 police radio broadcasts in [the movie] and footage from Katrina. I think I'm pushing it too hard, but somehow it adds. Even if you're not tuned in to what’s happening it gives a reality that at least seems familiar.

It’s a genius idea. The film is really a documentary constructed by the lead character, so it makes sense that she'll push the imagery as far as possible to make people aware of what's going on.
I keep saying "they're film students"! [laughs] We didn’t have a lot of money or time. There were principle scenes I knew we had to get. Then I knew one of the characters could “finish the movie” and basically do anything with it. We could throw in news footage, narration, anything—it was wide open because of the format.

Exactly. Did you feel these characters had to be younger to make this work?
I thought that made the most sense. My daughter is a film student and I know her friends, it was an automatic way to go.

Did the similarities between “Diary” and “Cloverfield” catch you by surprise?
We were already working on [“Diary”] and all of a sudden there was "Redacted" and "Cloverfield." Maybe there's a collective subconscious at work. We all have cameras now.

How did your cameo in the movie come about?
I was talked into it. I used to always do little cameos in my early films, then I gave up. I started not liking the way I looked, started thinking it was too much work, so I stopped. But people said that since I was going to back to the beginning I should do a little cameo since I always used to.

So, what's next? More zombies?
There's a lot of talk about a sequel to this. This film, probably because it cost so little, is already amazingly successful. It was sold to all these European territories and became a success before anyone even saw it.

Would you want the sequel to follow the same style?
I figure the only way to do it is to pick up with the same characters. There's a lot that I didn't get to say, I just need to find the surface story.

Really? Even though you said this one is overloaded with ideas there's still more to explore?
Yeah, it doesn't go into Hitler…