Written by: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy
Rating: [4/5]
For each individual, the time to grow up arrives and must take the opportunity to fully embrace the reality of becoming an adult. No one can assume when it will happen but for the protagonist we follow in Shaun of the Dead it just so happens to occur during a zombie apocalypse. It results in a hilarious collaboration between three incredible artists filled with incredible gaffes and proves to be such an entertaining film.
Refusing to grow up by spending his days with his friend in a messy apartment playing video games, Shaun (Simon Pegg) gets dumped by his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield). Suddenly the world has completely changed as people have begun to turn into zombies and Shaun must try his best with his friend Ed (Nick Frost) to get Liz and his mother to safety.
Zombie apocalypse stories have certainly had their moment in the sun in the 21st century. While initially garnering fame in feature films with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, we get a light parody of it with this feature brought together by a collaboration of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost. Together they take the serious approach of this genre and all of its world-ending dourness and turn it into a strong comedy about Shaun finding the proper balance between the adult world and keeping his own personality.
As the first of the Cornetto trilogy, which includes Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, this feature sets us off for the right tone of what to expect when these three guys collaborate. One of those things undoubtedly is the tremendous comedy on display, but this feature also employs some beautifully touching moments, which comes with the territory when everyone thinks they will die soon. This combination along with the famous Edgar Wright editing barrage, makes for something wholly enthralling and demonstrates what makes each of them so integral to making their combined projects work. Let me tell you, no one plays a lazy man-child quite like Nick Frost as he does in this film but he brings an irreplaceable charm that this film would not succeed without.
The way this feature introduced the zombie apocalypse comes together in such a humorous way and the slow-burning realization for Shaun and Ed makes for several funny scenes as they begin to piece it together. Following this realization they go off in their very immature way to get everyone and take them to safety, which unsurprisingly involves their favorite bar, and the opportunity to utilize Shaun’s stepfather’s car. A level of immaturity only an audience can love as they deal with the gravity of what exactly they are dealing with here. This feature certainly focuses on the central relationship between Shaun and Ed but the other side characters sprinkled in throughout definitely add their own flair to fill out the rest of the story.
This includes amazing character actors like Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton who serve as Shaun’s step-dad and biological mother respectively. They each bring their charm to the story as Shaun continues to act like a fool on many occasions. Then you have a boisterous couple of David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis) adding more fodder for Shaun to deal with as he just wants to save Liz and hopefully get back together once all of this blows over. This cantankerous crew makes for quite the group of people to be stuck together during a zombie apocalypse with many of them not liking each other, well mainly Shaun. At times instead of fighting off the zombies, in-fighting happens between the groups as they let out their petty grievances towards each other, which certainly does not help in the precarious situation they have found themselves in.
Now knowing much about Edgar Wright’s style going into my initial viewing of this film, I came away incredibly surprised by the amount of gore this film would portray. Something that may sound silly considering this operates as a zombie movie but the degree to which it showed how these characters killed zombies did raise my eyebrows on more than one occasion the genre this film holds as a comedy. This makes for some pretty awesome kill scenes allowing Wright to add another dimension to the way he captures the action of this film.
While not the best of the Cornetto trilogy, Shaun of the Dead is a certified banger in how it takes an understandably serious circumstance like a zombie apocalypse and just has fun with the whole idea. It adds sprinkles of a journey for Shaun as he knows he needs to find a balance between his old bachelor life where he can play video games with his best friend and allow his relationship with his girlfriend to blossom as well. A juggling act he must undertake on top of a zombie apocalypse happening outside. Quite the timing for him but one he must take on.
Films with Josh 
