Hilarious anarchy, the Marx Brothers meet Val Lewton

Rating: Null/10 (18 August 2011)

This is a wild film, which carries comedy into realms of anarchy hitherto undreamed-of. The humour is very British, and many of the characters are 'slobs' of a type only found in Britain. It is not that other countries do not have slobs, but British slobs are strangely different from, say, American slobs. This film sheds a great deal of light on slobology, and the variants of slobs which occur in Britain, which have never been the subject of sufficient academic study. One would think that the armies of sociologists marching into a Glorious Future intended to be ruled by automaton-like regulators who will determine our every move in our daily lives would have turned their attentions towards slobology, but this seems to have eluded them in their zeal to oppress people who are not slobs. Indeed, it is even possible that the sociologists and their disciples the social workers are themselves closet slobs who are afraid of coming out. But Simon Pegg is not afraid of coming out, indeed he is not afraid of anything, even crowds of murderous zombies. The film works because of the marvellous comic abilities of Simon Pegg, around whom the entire phantasmagoria of the story evolves. Much of the film takes place with the few sane slobs left in the country (Pegg and his girl friend) surrounded by hordes of dead people who have come back to life and wish to bite living people, infect them with their virus, and turn them into zombies like themselves. This film is thus a kind of insanely funny homage to the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), the classic psychological horror film from which the world never recovered, and which touched the ultimate nerve of our insecurities. There is no way to purge fear better than by laughter, and mocking the zombies in this outrageous farce is a good way to lay them to rest, at least temporarily. There are deep psychological reasons why this film was so successful, which go beyond its anarchic humour and zestful production. Pegg is also an excellent Everyman, in that he is totally immune to recognition of his own faults, and who does that remind us of? Pegg is also not afraid to look ridiculous. All of us are ridiculous, but most of us do not wish to appear so. Pegg is thus a kind of miraculous super-slob, someone so clueless, but possessing an intermittent animal cunning, that he is echelons above the rest of us in both folly and survival capacity. He is thus very like a king's fool in a mediaeval royal court. As he wades calmly through seas of threatening zombies, batting them with his cricket bat and bashing in their skulls (the only way to destroy a zombie, so we are told by real-life British television presenters used in the film, is to destroy the brain which has been infected, for nothing else can kill them), Pegg is simultaneously heroic and idiotic. He is heroic without knowing it, because he fights his way through the zombies without fear, but he is an idiot because his only plan is to go to his favourite pub The Winchester and take refuge there with a pint of beer, imagining it must be safe from the zombies because that is where he always goes to relax and unwind. So the film is really a celebration of idiocy, done with good humour and affection. The real reason why Pegg does not feel fear is because he is too stupid to do so, and the closest he comes to fear is a state of mindless apprehension, and worry of the 'will I miss the train' sort. The film is thus, in its wider sense, a commentary on the whole of British society, which in a state of apprehension stopping far short of fear because of mass stupidity, is wading through the bankruptcies and financial contagion (another form of zombieism) towards economic doom and social collapse. Most British slobs depend on a mythical thing called 'the State' to support them. When 'the State' can no longer do so, and when the bail-outs inevitably come to an end, the slobs will then possibly become hordes of angry zombies thronging the streets, as we see in this film, and indeed as has just happened in all the riots in real life London, which included slobs as young as eleven. This film might thus be likened to the ancient Biblical prophets, in its warning that the zombies are coming, or the end of the world is nigh, or the end of Croydon is nigh, or whatever. But then, there is always The Winchester, and a couple of pints, to save us. The supporting cast and the direction of this film by Edgar Wright are all superb. The script by Pegg and Wright is brilliant. The film is a classic, not just a 'cult classic', but a real one. And anyone who doesn't agree can have his head bashed in by a cricket bat.