Shaun of the Dead

Ealasaid/ September 27, 2004/ Movie Reviews and Features

Originally written for The Milpitas Post.
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy
Rated: R for zombie violence/gore and language.
Parental Notes: There is a lot of gore in this, some of it quite disturbing. Provided your teen can handle blood and guts and has a wicked sense of humor, they’ll like it. Otherwise, they’d be best off checking out a zombie-free romantic comedy.

“Shaun of the Dead,” the posters tell us, is “A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies.” That sums it up almost perfectly, for although the title character isn’t actually undead he might as well be. Shuffling through his life between the local shop, his dead-end job, and his favorite pub, The Winchester, Shaun (Simon Pegg) is completely oblivious to the world around him and is blindly settling into a dead-end life. When zombies begin to run amuck in London, where he lives, Shaun doesn’t even notice at first because he has more important things on his mind, like getting a much-needed soda at the shop and going home to play some video games.
Shaun’s girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) has finally gotten sick of his excuses, his slacking, and his habit of spending all his time down at the Winchester with his unemployed childhood friend (and slobbish roommate) Ed (Nick Frost). She dumps him, and Shaun wants desperately to win her back, but he has the zombies to deal with first.
As soon as he and Ed finally pay attention to the news and learn that bashing the zombies’ heads in will stop them, they arm themselves with a cricket bat, and set off to rescue Shaun’s mum Barbara (Penelope Wilton), his step-dad Philip (Bill Nighy, who was born to play a zombie), and of course Liz. They wind up with Liz’ roommates as well, and head for the Winchester, hoping to hole up in safety there.
It’s difficult to describe this odd mix of horror and humor. By turns hilarious, suspenseful, gory, silly, and touching, “Shaun of the Dead” blends genres in a way that Hollywood only wishes it could. Much of the humor is thoroughly British. It’s clever rather than slapstick, witty rather than ham fisted. The opening scenes are filled with regular people going through their lives like zombies, slack-jawed and staring. It’s not until one of the zombies approaching Shaun is impaled and still keeps coming that he realizes these people aren’t just drunk or weird.
Not that this is just a comedy film. “Shaun of the Dead” manages to be both a mockery of zombie films and a great zombie flick in its own right. It is even at times an homage to the classic films – watch for a major character to be torn apart a la “Day of the Dead.” The gore is balanced by the humor, fortunately, as when one of the heroes takes the aforementioned character’s dismembered leg and uses it as a club to beat back the zombies.
“Shaun of the Dead” teeters on the edge, walking the razor thin line between too much and too little and navigating the balance between horror, humor, and sentimentality with ease. It helps that Pegg, Ashfield, and the rest of the cast are spot-on in their roles, playing ordinary people who don’t magically turn into heroes when the going gets tough. They’re just regular folks who are in a spot of trouble and trying to muddle their way out of it.
It’s their ordinariness that makes everything so funny.
“Shaun of the Dead” is a great date movie provided that both halves of the couple have strong stomachs and a dark sense of humor. It seems destined to become a cult favorite, as the average romantic comedy crowd will be put off by the gore. This may not be a movie for everyone, but for the right audience it will seem like a godsend.