The border wars take on a whole new meaning in George Romero's "Diary of the Dead," and it has nothing to do with illegal immigrants from Mexico.

It's about people crossing the border from life to death and back again. Or, as the movie within the movie is called, "The Death of Death."

Director-writer Romero now lives and works in Toronto, but he's still name-dropping Pennsylvania places, from Homestead and Scranton to the University of Pittsburgh and state stores.

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'Diary of the Dead'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Josh Close, Michelle Morgan.
• Rating: R for strong horror violence and gore, and pervasive language.
• Web site: myspace.com/diaryofthedead

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Like a boxer in fighting trim, Romero has shed the name cast, the accompanying budget and studio pressures of "Land of the Dead" and returned to his indie roots with a story that is technologically savvy and a savage examination of our time.

He also invents new ways to stop zombies involving farm implements and hospital equipment, while not ignoring the old standby of a bullet to the brain. As usual, it's not for the squeamish.

The movie opens with some footage downloaded from the Internet by Pitt students who will be the focus of the story.

It shows a TV news crew preparing for the standard shot of bodies being wheeled out to ambulances after a double murder-suicide. But the "live shot" takes an ironic, ghastly turn when the corpses rise from their gurneys.

The action then spins back a couple of days as a student is making a low-budget horror movie as his senior class project. The mummy is shambling too fast, and the woman in peril wonders why the girls in scary movies always have to fall down and lose their shirts and shoes.

But when they get wind of news reports about the dead not staying dead, the students and a boozy British professor (Scott Wentworth) scatter. A couple head to Philadelphia while the others eventually pile into a Winnebago and head east across the state, camera rolling.

"Come on, babe, it's part of history," filmmaker Jason Creed (Josh Close) insists when his girlfriend (Michelle Morgan) asks why he has a camera plastered to his face. When someone points a lens at him, he's told, "See how it feels to have a camera shoved in your face while people are dying."

What happens when you view life from behind a lens or a screen is just one of the questions being asked here. As always, Romero isn't just making a zombie movie.

He is exploring: old media vs. new media; the cacophony created by all those voices in cyberspace; government spin and abandonment; the breakdown of civilization in a crisis; and what happens if the end of the world approaches and there's no one there to record it. Or their camera battery is about to die.

As with a growing body of movies, the medium is the messenger. Romero, by the way, got there before "Cloverfield" -- "Diary of the Dead" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, four months before the movie about young New Yorkers documenting the attack on their city.

"Diary" ends with a heavy question that, while fitting or even necessary, nearly sinks the enterprise with its weightiness and pessimism. But, make no mistake, Romero is alive and well and living with the undead.