Skip to main contentThere's nothing worse than a film that fails to live up to the expectations of its genre--a horror that doesn't scare, a comedy that isn't funny, a porno that doesn't prompt a booty call. And in an era of been-there, done-that cynicism, where Hollywood remakes, recycles and reimagines nearly everything, where mediocrity is considered excellence and crap is given a pass with "it could've been worse," the quest to find a film that works on multiple levels seems futile.
Shaun of the Dead, a new movie from England, is that film.
"We wanted to have a film that was at once a horror film and a comedy, rather than be a comedy film about horror," said star and co-writer Simon Pegg during a recent phone interview. "We wanted to have both genres working parallel with each other, and never really at the expense of each other either."
Pegg plays the title character, Shaun, a 29-year-old trapped in a state of arrested development. Shaun works at a dead-end job, sits around playing video games with his unemployed, pot-dealing best friend, Ed (Nick Frost), and is a constant disappointment to his long-suffering girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield). Fed up with being taken for granted, Liz dumps Shaun, prompting a drunken binge that ends with him vowing to get his life in order. But the universe throws a wrench in Shaun's plans for self-improvement when a zombie apocalypse comes, causing the undead to rise up and attack the living. Now Shaun must rescue his mother (Penelope Wilton) and win back Liz's heart, just as the world around him is overrun by shambling, rotting corpses.
The last few years have seen a wave of zombie movies, including the Resident Evil films, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and 28 Days Later (although those creatures, technically, aren't zombies). All have drawn inspiration from filmmaker George Romero's classic trilogy--Night of the Living Dead (1968), the original Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985)--but none of them has earned a place alongside such classics. Shaun of the Dead is the first zombie film to really build upon what the Pittsburgh filmmaker started when he reinvented the genre back in 1968.
Pegg and writing partner Edgar Wright cite Romero's films--especially Dawn of the Dead--as a strong influence. Besides the title nod, their film features scenes, musical cues, characters and dialogue lifted from Romero's films. Even the place Shaun works, an appliance store named Foree Electric, is named after actor Ken Foree, star of Dawn of the Dead, who is among the legion of Shaun of the Dead fans. Romero even endorsed the film. "Even if the film was derided by the press," Pegg says, "the fact that George liked it was kind of the only approval we ever really wanted--sort of Daddy's approval, as it were."
But while Shaun of the Dead is brimming with knowing winks and nudges, Pegg and Wright have carefully built upon the mythology that was laid out before them. "One of the inspirations for the film was that literal "what if" factor," Wright explains. "What happens if you wake up on a Sunday morning and there are zombies outside your flat or in your back garden? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna to defend yourself?"
The answer to that question unfolds in what turns out to be one of the funniest films in recent years, a seamless cross-genre mix. Wright meticulously layers the film with jokes in the foreground and background, infusing slapstick, cerebral and dark comedy, often in the same shot. During one brilliant sequence--a single, long tracking shot--Shaun walks to the corner market, oblivious to the zombie uprising that has occurred overnight. Making his way to and from his home, Shaun even slips on the splattered guts of zombie victims yet somehow never notices the wholesale carnage that surrounds him.
Ultimately, where Shaun of the Dead succeeds is that it, like Romero's films, is about much more than a zombie invasion. Instead, here's a film about a man forced to take on real responsibility and live up to his true potential as a son, boyfriend and slayer of the undead.
Rated R
Opens Friday, Sept. 24. Broadway, Lloyd Cinema, Division Street, Tigard, Evergreen Parkway
WWeek 2015