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Shaun of the Dead
By John Reppion
When fans of Channel Four’s Spaced first heard that series director Edgar Wright and co writer Simon Pegg were working on a zombie film together, expectations were naturally high. However, no one (Pegg and co included) could have anticipated the world wide success of Shaun Of The Dead; the self proclaimed first rom-zom-com.
Shaun (Pegg) is in his late twenties, working in a dead end job with his dope dealing best mate Ed (Nick Frost) living on his couch. He and his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) have been having some problems recently; she thinks Shaun’s too stuck in his ways and decides that it would be best for everyone if they split up. After a night of drowning his sorrows in the local Shaun wakes up, with a hangover, to a London suddenly filled with the living dead. He needs to get Liz back, but he also needs to stay alive. Cue zombies being clobbered with cricket bats, pummelled with pool cues, smacked with spades and assaulted with ashtrays as Shaun and a small band of friends, family and acquaintances battle their way towards the safety of…the pub?
Combining the visceral horror and full on gore that one would expect from a “proper” zombie film with all the pop culture reference of Spaced and the quirky Britishness of a Richard Curtis romantic comedy, Shaun Of The Dead is a masterful blending of genres which offers, literally, something for everyone. It’s laugh out loud funny from start to finish but there’s never any question of the genre being parodied here; the zombies are deadly serious.
The film is crammed with genre references and, as with Spaced, Wright borrows lots of shots, angles and set ups from other films (as he himself points out the DVD commentary track early scenes of subdued urban panic in the film were heavily influenced by Philip Kaufman’s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, for example) but it’s done very openly, with a great deal of affection and always manages to stay on the right side of the thin homage/rip off line.
Shaun Of The Dead is more than just a fantastic zombie film; it’s a fantastic film full stop and comes pretty damn close to being perfect in my book. It’s so well balanced in terms of comedy drama and horror that it’s almost impossible for me to criticize, short of saying “it should have been longer”.