Shaun Of The Dead

Director Edgar Wright and co-writer and star Simon Pegg had successfully collaborated on the British slacker sitcom Spaced before they come up with this George Romero zombie-movie spoof that was a huge commercial and critical hit in its day.

Pegg plays Shaun, a twenty-nine year old who works in a dead end job at an electrical appliance store and spends his spare time hanging around with his slob of a mate, Ed (Nick Frost). Shaun’s girlfriend Liz (an improbably fit Kate Ashfield) has given him an ultimatum - grow up or it’s over, but Shaun can’t shake his dependence on Ed’s easy companionship. Then. the dead begin to rise. If Shaun can save Liz will he win her back? You know the answer.

Although zombie-movie fans are the film’s primary audience the first half of the film in which Shaun and Ed do their clueless man-child double act oblivious to the impending horror about to beset them will be for most its better part, at once funny and pathetic. Once the undead appear, slapstick comedy takes the place of deadpan wit, leading us to a protracted battle with the zombie hordes that will doubtless be appreciated by the abovementioned genre fans but leave the rest of us indifferent before it ends with a lame closer that mirrors the opening scene but undermines the film's narrative arc.

 

Want something different?