A slacker (Simon Pegg) tries to change his life by rescuing his girlfriend (Kate Ashfield) and mother when the world is overrun by zombies.
Shaun of the Dead is three films in one. The first section, about slacker Shaun in his day-to-day life, failing at his nowhere job, losing his girlfriend, playing video games with his even-more-of-a-slacker friend, is typical British sitcom fare. It’s nicely written, with amusing dialog and plenty of sight-gags. Nothing special, but for a setup, it’s not bad. But it goes on too long. The jokes stretch too far and it starts to feel like a 2nd or 3rd rate Britcom. The best bits involve the first sightings of zombies and how they are no different than Shaun and the other slackers living their nothing lives.
The film’s second section is where Shaun lives up to its hype. Once Shaun is in full zombie-fighting mode, this is a great comedy. The attempt to destroy the living dead with old LPs (but not the good LPs) is a bit I’ll remember for years. While the act-like-a-zombie routine was done in 1999’s The Mummy it is still good for a laugh.
But unfortunately, it all falls apart in the third section. Suddenly, Shaun of the Dead ceases to be a comedy. The zombie fighting and emotional loss is taken seriously. In the worst scene in the film, there is a Mexican standoff with the characters arguing over how to treat the dead body of a loved-one before it rises as a zombie. We all know this scenario from a hundred other films. Gee, I wonder what the right answer is? I wonder what will happen if they don’t destroy the brain? Ah! Has writer/director Edgar Wright never seen a zombie film? He then goes on to give us a man standing by the window with the horde outside. Wow, what originality. As a comedy, Shaun of the Dead is first rate, but as a serious zombie horror film, it would have been out of date in 1970, and for reasons I cannot guess, it tries so hard to be a serious zombie flick. It’s too bad. There was so much potential here, but it ends up a huge disappointment.