I wanted to watch something funny today because I was looking at the list of movies I plan to watch this month and there's a lot of really scary ones left. I suppose Shaun of the Dead isn't a complete horror film, the majority of it is way too funny to be scary in the slightest. And that's a great thing. This movie is wittily scripted, well paced, and superbly acted with a fantastic cast. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are both well known actors with a strong body of work of their own, but together they form a powerful comedy duo with incredible onscreen chemistry that they showcase again in the equally as excellent Hot Fuzz.
Shaun of the Dead follows the story of average, mediocre Shaun (Pegg), his video game playing, pot smoking, unemployed best friend/roommate Ed (Frost) and various others, including Shaun's girlfriend and more than slightly oblivious mother. A zombie plague breaks out, as it is prone to do in films such as this, and the characters must find safety. As I mentioned before, this is first and foremost a comedy. The dialogue between all the characters is cleverly written and well delivered, with a plethora of English phrases and expressions that North American audiences will either be baffled by or find completely hilarious. But still, there is a horror element. In the scenes with zombies there is a lot of realistic gore. People get eaten and bitten very often, and blood always gushes from their wounds. It's excessive in some cases, but still believable. One scene has Shaun blow his own mother's head off after she is bitten and turns into a zombie. Another character (who is a total dick) gets ripped apart and disemboweled by a horde of undead. It's pretty jarring to see in a film that for the most part has the audience laughing, but still, it's a zombie outbreak. There's gotta be blood.
There were some very clever scenes at the beginning that showed people sitting in buses, or waiting in line at the supermarket, just standing there oblivious to their surroundings like.....well, zombies. Shaun's world is so dull, monotonous and repetitive that even after the plague begins, it takes him a long time to even notice that something is wrong, just because things haven't changed for him that significantly. The events of the film are almost like a wake-up call for him, something to shake him out of his boring life and reignite the spark between him and his significant other, who spends the majority of the first few scenes lecturing him about how pointless his life is and how he needs to change. The apocalypse offers Shaun a chance to prove that he's capable of greater things, and he does this by taking leadership of the group, even though he indirectly leads most of them to their deaths.
But hey, he tried.
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