[Movie 303 / Day 322]
At the moment, there seems to be a bit of a resurgence in zombie love, what with the excellent ZOMBIELAND and micro-budget COLIN causing much undead-based buzz, there is also a plethora of re-animated corpse based books around. The popularity of zombie movies, and indeed the quality of them, seems to wax and wane somewhat, but for the last few years we seem to have been riding a wave of both quantity and quality.
Back in 1968, the zombie as we know it simply didn’t exist. Zombies had been featured in movies, but they were a far cry from the lumbering, stupid, brain-eating monsters we’ve come to love. Back then, they were simply re-animated corpses being used as cheap labour. And then George A. Romero came along and invented zombies as we know them in his genre-changing movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Unfortunately, for quite some years, other film-makers didn’t quite grasp the potential of the living dead as a monster and so not much happened, with a couple of exceptions, for a whole decade. In 1978, Romero gave the lumbering beasts another shove in the right direction with DAWN OF THE DEAD.
That shove helped to bring a whole host of awesome zombie-based coolness throughout the 80s, with such classics as ZOMBI II, EVIL DEAD I and II, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, Romero even had a third go with DAY OF THE DEAD… Sadly, by the time the 90s came around, the zombie had been put back in the ground and, with few exceptions, only reared it’s putrefying head in bad low-budget horror movies.
Another decade passed and suddenly, from out of nowhere, the zombie reappeared on the general public’s radar with 28 DAYS LATER, an apocalyptic view of London which featured some amazing sequences of one man staggering through a deserted city. Unfortunately, it lost it’s way a little in the third act, but that’s largely irrelevant. Zombies were back.
Somewhere around this point in time, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg sat down and decided to have their own stab at a zombie flick. Apparently, while working together on cult sitcom Spaced, the two had discovered a mutual love of the genre. In writing SHAUN OF THE DEAD, Wright/Pegg managed to not only pay homage to Romero; to not only make a funny, British, comedy; but also to create a genuinely brilliant comedy horror that is now recognised as one of the best examples of the genre ever made.
Wright/Pegg’s true stroke of genius is that they didn’t write a straightforward zombie movie. Instead, they wrote a romcom – a romcom that just happens to be set amidst a zombie apocalypse. Secondly, in main character Shaun, they managed to create an everyman, an anti-hero that many people would recognise and emphasise with. He isn’t a muscled superman, expert in kung fu, brandishing machine guns and ninja swords. He’s a salesman in an electronics shop, stuck in a rut with his life going nowhere. Brandishing a cricket bat. His reactions are much as we’d like to think our own would be if corpses rose up and started to eat us. And that’s why we love him.
After his girlfriend unceremoniously dumps him on the eve of the zombie infection, he decides to prove to her that he is going to do things with his life. And what better way than to protect her against the hordes of monsters hungry for flesh? It’s not all comedy and violence though, it even manages to be quite moving, in one scene in particular.
Like HOT FUZZ after it, SOTD is full of little observations and hints at what’s to come throughout the movie that you just won’t notice on the first watch. There are too many brilliant bits to mention, but two of my favourite scenes in the entire flick are the sequences in which Shaun goes to the local shop for a paper; once pre- and once post-infection. The two sequences are nigh on identical but for the added carnage – all of which a bleary-eyed Shaun doesn’t even notice. Extra points for choreographing zombie-killing to a Queen song too, it’s laugh-out-loud funny every time I see it.
If you haven’t seen it, watch it at your earliest convenience. If you have any interest in the comedy or horror genres whatsoever, you will enjoy it. If you have seen it, watch it again – it bears much repeating. So much so, that as soon as it had finished, I watched it through again and listened to the Wright/Pegg commentary, something I recommend doing if you have the time.
Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 8.0 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 99 mins ]