Movies: Shaun of the Dead

When we were first given these blogs, my initial thought was to simply post the four entries I needed per week, before moving on to more important things, like sleeping, eating or catching up on The Wire. But, I thought about it some more, and figured that maybe I could push myself a little.

I like films. A lot. I don’t have a favourite, or a particularly preferred genre (though it’s hard to go past classic noir), but I love watching them, reading about them and talking about them. Since most of my friends get a painful, sort of glazed look in their eyes when I’m on my second hour of rambling, I figured that I may occasionally post about some films I enjoy. They won’t really be reviews or synopses, just one guy’s self-entitled appreciation.

The first film I wanted to highlight is Shaun of the Dead. Given that most of you would know/have seen the film itself, I don’t really need to give much of a plot overview – there’s a crisis of the zombie-kind, and a small team of unlikely survivors band together to make it out alive. Pretty standard.

Zombies are in vogue right now, but there’s a rich history of the walking dead in cinema, going back to Romero giving us the now iconic shambling cannibals, and even further – Jacques Tourneur gave us I Walked with a Zombie in 1943. What sets Shaun apart is its obvious adoration for the genre – it’s not a spoof or parody, but a loving homage. Ed (Nick Frost) shouts, “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” into the phone, a clear tip of the cap to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, while Evil Dead and 28 Days Later get look ins as well.

The film is gory and frequently scary, but also has one of the funniest scripts of the last decade – from Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed’s argument about which records to use as weapons against the living dead, to the gang’s desperate battle to the tune of “Don’t Stop Me Now”, it rarely lets up with the humour, which – when combined with Edgar Wright’s kinetic direction and editing – creates an incredible energy that buoys the film.

Also worth watching if you’re a fan – Hot Fuzz, Tucker & Dale VS. Evil. Hot Fuzz was made by the same team, and is a homage to buddy cop action flicks of the 80’s, while Tucker & Dale similarly takes a horror convention (teenagers threatened by hillbillies in the woods) and subverts your expectations. It’s also hysterical.

Pun of the Day! Shaun of the Dead. It’s bloody good.

Yep, not doing that again.