George Romero has e-mail but no cell phone.

He once tried to answer questions on a Web site, vowing to do it diligently three nights a week. But after a week and half, the people online started sniping and calling each other names. "I'm out of here," he decided.

But he keeps up with the times enough to direct and write "Diary of the Dead," in which University of Pittsburgh students use cell phones, laptops, handheld cameras, surveillance footage, YouTube and other Web weapons to tell the story of the dead returning to life. The movie opens today.

"I plug in enough to sort of know what's going on, but it's mostly through friends. I'm not a gadgeteer. Honestly, I don't even have a cell phone," Romero, 68, recently said with a laugh, by phone from New York.

Still, he thought "Diary" would be at the vanguard of the movie movement examining life through the lens, but, he says, "Now, all of a sudden we have to say, well, at least we're trendy."

That's because "Diary" comes out after "Redacted" and "Cloverfield" and just before "Vantage Point," in which a tourist with a camcorder and a TV news producer provide two of eight pieces of a puzzle about an assassination attempt.

Without a studio calling the shots (or writing the checks), Romero returned to his indie roots to shoot "Diary" in an economical 20 days in and around Toronto.

"Then we all sat around and said, 'Well, maybe we need a scene that's a little bigger, a scene that's a little sillier,' and we wrote a couple of new scenes and -- as it turns out -- those scenes have become very popular and I'm very glad we did them." Among them is a killer sequence with an Amish farmer.

"It's sort of like tasting the soup. It needs a little more cumin," or in this case, two more days of shooting, supported by Artfire Films.

Still, Romero spent less than $4 million to make "Diary," which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where enthusiastic fans nearly blew the roof off the theater. In short order, the Weinstein Co. bought the North American rights.

"I must say, I'm amazed that people are willing to shake hands with this movie, actually, because I thought after 'Land of the Dead' that this seemed a little small.

"Turned out that many of my fans actually rebelled against 'Land of the Dead' because they thought it was too Hollywood, and it turns out everyone's loving this because it's sort of back to the roots, it's more personal, it's character-driven, all that stuff."

It even left Romero feeling nostalgic, because the characters reminded him of the cast and crew who made "Night of the Living Dead" outside of Pittsburgh four decades ago.

Talking about "Land of the Dead," Romero says Universal Pictures "really let us make the movie we wanted to make," but the production was grueling.

"It was too ambitious for the money we had," it was freezing cold, and every night after coming off the set, Romero would have to spend another three or four hours plotting the next day's work and how to get the shots the production had missed.

When the movie came out -- it was the centerpiece of a tribute that attracted Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg to Pittsburgh in June 2005 -- Romero liked it but decided, "I'd really love to go back and do something little."

He even thought about using actual film students for a bare-bones "Diary" but financial backers said, "Let's do it a little bigger."

Now, Romero says, "Man, it's never a vacation, but it was the closest thing to a vacation as you can get after 'Land of the Dead.' 'Land of the Dead' was like fighting the Battle of the Bulge."

This time, Romero had the freedom and time to spend weeks poring through Getty Images footage to find what he wanted to use. He plucked some images from the Katrina disaster, other crises around the world and even snuck in an almost-subliminal shot of an atom bomb.

When it came time to record the news tracks for "Diary," Romero found some familiar faces, if not voices. He, producer Peter Grunwald and editor Michael Doherty did them initially but started casting about for others.

"It can't just be the three of us. We got the idea, what if we got some of our buddies like Steve King." That would be horrormeister Stephen King to the rest of us, and he not only served as one of the news readers but wrote his own copy, too.

Other unseen news readers: Tarantino, Pegg and Guillermo del Toro. "So I felt it was a great sort of vote of confidence, I really felt like my old buds were coming out and rooting for us."

Many of Romero's new friends live in Toronto, where he now makes his home. He went there to work and fell in love with the city.

"It was like a breath of fresh air, and it has been sort of revitalizing, it was like starting over or something. I needed something to keep me going, so that's where I am. There's a wonderful filmmaking community up there."

He hung on in Pittsburgh when many others followed the work elsewhere -- it has since returned, in abundance -- but he still talks about valiant efforts to make "Land of the Dead" here. "We tried like hell to get 'Land of the Dead' into Pittsburgh," he said, mentioning County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and others.

The city could not compete with Canada at that point, due to tax rebates and the currency exchange.

Still, he doctored up a shot of Pittsburgh for "Land" and set "Diary" in Pennsylvania. He says he would love to return to Pittsburgh to make another movie, but in the meantime, "Even in the new film, it's Pittsburgh. I'm sort of still selling the 'Burgh."

As for "Diary," he says, "It's from the heart. We did it exactly the way we wanted to." And now that the writers' strike is over, he can get started on scripting a sequel because "The Death of Death" isn't dead just yet.