oor Shaun (Pegg). At 29, he's hardly done anything with his life, save establishing a regular post at his local pub, motivating his layabout pal Ed (Frost) to scratch for rent money and barely keeping hold of his girlfriend, Liz (Ashfield). On one strange day, however, things seem to have changed; his girlfriend's gone, for one, but even stranger is the seeming existence of flesh-eating zombies.
As their numbers grow and Shaun and Ed realize the danger is in fact very real, they hatch a plan to rescue their loved ones, but soon discover that their delusions of grandeur are hardly as easy to execute as they are to imagine. Retrieving his mum, Barbara (Wilton), Liz and her reluctant flatmates from their apartment, Shaun and Ed steal off toward what they hope is safe haven: namely their precious watering hole, the Winchester. Unfortunately, it too has been overrun with zombies, and the group realize that in order to dupe their undead adversaries, they must become like them—if in behavior only.
Encountering a glut of flesh-eaters, much less the clockwork stupidity of Ed, Shaun and his coterie of survivors struggle to find a way out of this impending world of death, and soon realize that it may in fact be an underachiever who accomplishes the impossible task of saving the world.
A new Dawn on the horizon
For the doubtful few who haven't already heard about the superlative job Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright did with Shaun of the Dead, let it be known that the film is not only the best outright zombie movie since Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but it bears the distinction of being only second to Evil Dead 2 in its combination of horror and comedy. Pegg and Wright, avowed fans of Romero's work, have put together a film that is culled from the influence of their predecessors (the opening sequence is scored to some DOTD library music) but manages to transcend them all and become its own entity; seldom have I seen a horror movie that amplifies the gore and the goofs so steadily that you're literally shaken by the juxtaposition by the time the climax arrives, and even then you can't quite decide whether you're scared for your life or soused with laughter.
I admit that I entered the film's opening scenes with more than mild trepidation, especially given the nature of its protagonists, who are essentially two underachieving stoners who want nothing more in life than to drink beer, play PlayStation and suffer through a blue-collar existence, blissfully unaware of the very notion of ambition. But slowly the film begins to take off in directions one doesn't expect; Wright's elaborate tracking shots, which are repeated at least twice during the opening scenes of the film, demonstrate that theirs is a world of sameness, and it's only upon the slow and unexpected introduction of new influences—such as the aforementioned zombies—that it becomes disrupted. Soon, to mysteriously captivating effect, Shaun's plight becomes genuinely heroic, and the tenor of the film becomes distinctively emotional in a way that no other film of the genre has ever as effectively breached.
There are countless references to other movies of the genre, including Romero's films and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, but Pegg and Wright create their own mythology with Shaun of the Dead and forge a path that is likely to be as influential as the films that inspired their film. Despite including possibly the goriest disembowelment I've ever seen in a mainstream movie, the script finds many more opportunities for genuine emotion than one would ever expect, and finally, after decades of failure, creates a scene of startling resonance, in which a person is forced to kill a loved one who has turned into a zombie; it's a shattering moment for any film, but Pegg's performance makes it believable, even as the jokes are flying around it at breakneck speed.
Other sequences, such as when Shaun and Ed deliberate which records to hurl at a zombie adversary (no Sign O' The Times, yes Batman soundtrack), are as funny for their seeming inappropriateness as for their sense of madcap invention, but the film's overall authenticity is unquestionable; seldom have I seen a movie with such an implausible deus ex machina for a conclusion, but by the time it arrived I was so embroiled in Shaun's world I would have believed anything they threw at me.
