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'Shaun
of the Dead' (2004) Directed by: Edgar Wright |
| The appeal: | |
| This is destined to become a cult classic. It's already well on it's way. What a great premise for a movie. An endearing tale of a likable chap (Simon Pegg), caught in a dead end job, just leaving that 'Lads' faze, and yet refusing to enter the 'responsible' faze which traditionally follows. He has a girlfriend, (Kate Ashfield), who is one London minute away from dumping him. And he has a big fat lump of a mate (Nick Frost), who will never let him grow up, who encourages Shaun's antics as a way of holding onto his friendship. Shaun dotes on his mother, yet dislikes and distrusts his Father. Will he grow out of it? or will he become like the other Zombies in their pointless, trivial lives. Did I say Zombies? oh yes, because if that was not enough of a story right there, it's also got the dead reawakening and attacking the living. | |
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But is the movie all that? Well, for one thing, it's done with complete respect for the genre. The Director, Edgar Wright, and his co writer Simon Pegg, are George A. Romero fans. It's obvious. There are a goodly amount of pop Zombie references in 'Shaun of the Dead'. It's set in London, so warning - Mumbling fast Brit accents here. Lots of jokes that State siders may not necessarily get on first view. Sort of like 'The Office' (Brit version of course). And that can be one of the endearing things about it, the fact that it has so much re playability. There are a host of fast and subtle jokes. They fly past very fast and are refreshingly original. The underlying joke here being that if we all turned into Zombies, would anyone recognize it? We all have such mundane lives. Our spirits sucked dry by mindless T. V. boring jobs, playing pointless video games and so on. It takes Shaun quite a while to catch on himself. That also works to make the characters so much more endearing. We spend time actually getting to know them and their lives. We like them. One of the oddest surprises though is the effectiveness of the Zombie direction, coaching, wrangling, whatever you want to call it. I mean these Zombies are better at it than any serious 'Z' movie, even Romero's. The scene when Shaun finds a zombie woman in his garden, is very eerie. She's just standing there. They think she's drunk. But it works. She has that vacant look that many horror Directors only manage to get from their leading heroin's and not their zombie hordes. I have noticed that the very occasional time a horror movie is set in the UK it somehow seems more scary. It's hard to quantify. I suspect it's because we are so used to seeing the familiar cookie cutter components in US horror movies. the Square jawed, tanned hero, the big scary house, the dumb teenagers, the spooky kid, the psycho in the mask. So to strip all of those familiar cliches away, somehow makes it seem all the more realistic.
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"Don't look round. But I think there might be one of them behind us"
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