Shaun of the Dead
Shaun isn’t a complete loser, but he isn’t eating at the top of the food chain and maybe that’s why its easy to relate. He’s working a dead end job at an electronics store, his girlfriend of 3 years is ready to leave him out of boredom and his slob of a roomate certainly isn’t helping matters. After a night of boozing at the local pub, Shaun decides things need to change for the better. He needs to sort his life out and become a different person or be doomed to the couch next to the slob. The next morning Shaun awakens with more than just a hangover. He’s got a zombie in his backyard.
This is Shaun of the Dead, dubbed a Romantic Comedy. With Zombies. SotD has been in British cinemas since April 2004, but only recently made it to the states after a massive success in Londontown. The unlikely hero appeals to the hero in every average joe and serves up an above average amount of laughs along the way. Instead of the usual survival horror movie with the usual cast of characters (mother turned marine, marine turned moron, loner kid turned team player) we get a bunch of nobodies who know nothing about survival and get by (barely) on pure stupid luck. We have our team’s leader, Shaun (Simon Pegg), his recent ex-girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) and his sloth of a flatmate Ed (Nick Frost). Tagging along are Liz’s roomates David (Dylan Morton) and Dianne (Lucy Davis), Shaun’s mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton) and her husband Philip (Bill Nighy). Shaun’s mission: to rescue all those people he cares about, leave the supposed safety of their individual homes and hold up in the local dive bar. Armed with a shovel, a few miscellaneous blunt objects and improvisational acting the motley crue fight their way through the streets on England to make it to the pub. Such is the story, which granted isn’t much, but the humor makes it worth admission.
Somehow filmmakers managed to make the multiple decapitations light hearted, often laugh out loud funny, despite the occasional gruesome bloody makeup effects. In fact the plethora of missing limbs found in most zombie flics are considerably toned down to develop the living characters rather than the dead. Those looking for a gorefest are going to be disappointed. There is a romantic sub-plot here, but really it’s just a twist on the genre that makes you wanna keep your eyes open, even through the goriest of scenes (evisceration and disembowelment anyone?). I want to clear up quickly that Shaun of the Dead is not a spoof, it’s filmed with the same camera techniques one would see in Night of the Living Dead. The dialogue is right out of a Bridget Jones movie and the whole thing pieces together unusually well.
Still, the film will have a hard time appealing to everyone. The British accents aren’t thick, but can still be difficult to understand at times (“sad old f$#@ers” sounds like “saddle f$#@ers”). Some might simply be turned off by the sheer number of zombie films that have been out in the last 10 years, not to mention that it’s going back to back with another zombie mega-flic, Resident Evil 2. Still, it may not win any awards, but it’s a great change of pace over the action angle of survival horror.
