Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

The department store salesman Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a real loser, having a routine life that is bothering his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield): every night they go to the pub Winchester with Shaun's best friend, the moron Edward (Nick Frost), and Liz's friends Dianne (Lucy David) and David (Dylam Moran). Shaun and Ed share a house with Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), who hates Ed. And, oh yeah, London is overrun with multitudes of zombies. When a satellite returning to Earth has some problems over London, the dead return to life and eat human flesh of those alive. Shaun plots a plan to rescue his mother and Liz and bring them to the Winchester, but his sanctuary is surrounded of zombies and things do not happen as planned. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Because of the timing and the indisputable similarity of the names, the distributors were forced to hold the film back until two weeks after Dawn of the Dead (2004) was released in the UK. When Shaun walks to the shops before heading to work when everything is normal, Shaun passes a road sweeper. On the road-sweeper operator's radio one can hear a news bulletin detailing how a space probe called Omega 6 entered Earth's atmosphere several days early over the southwest of England and broke apart over a well-built area. This a direct link to Night of the Living Dead (1968), in which a space probe breaks up over a small town in the USA, and the resulting radiation causes the dead in the local graveyard to come to life. Night of the Living Dead (1968) director George A. Romero was given a private viewing of the film near his home in Florida. During the scene in which Ed (Nick Frost) yells into the phone, "We're coming to get you, Barbara," Romero was oblivious to the fact it was a direct lift from his film Night of the Living Dead (1968) and only found out later after a phone conversation with director Edgar Wright. All of the newsreaders and television presenters are real people portraying themselves. George A. Romero, creator of the films that this movie pays homage to and lampoons, was so impressed with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's work that he asked them to appear in Land of the Dead (2005), the fourth part of his Dead series, in cameos as zombies. The duo also appears prominently in their zombie make-up on the cover of the region-one unrated director's cut DVD. A lot of the music used in the film comes from previous zombie movies.

Well, after watching Night of the Living Dead, Mick suggested that I watch Shaun of the Dead. Shaun of the Dead is not a parody of zombie movies, it is more of a tribute. The creators call it a romantic zombie comedy, or rom zom com. They did a good job at making it funny without making it ludicrous (as much as a zombie movie can, I guess) . I guess that reason it is so good is because the comedy doesn't come from the zombies, they are treated seriously. Another thing is that the comedy is not based on the absurdity of the situation but it is based on the relationships between the characters. It truly is a romantic comedy that just happens to have zombies in it.