A matter of life in death

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2004)

Slack-jawed, vacant stare, lurching, staggering gait ... I'm not talking about the zombies in "Shaun of the Dead". I'm talking about some of the people I saw after I left the theatre.
"Shaun of the Dead" is not scary. What's scary is that there are people out there, around us, among us, who live as though they were zombies. People for whom life is never anything more than working 9 to 5 in a dead-end job, then coming home to spend the evening as couch potatoes in front of the TV or video games. People with no soul or spirituality. People for whom there is no heaven or hell, no thought of survival after death. People for whom mere survival in life is about as much as they can handle.
People of whom John Cougar Mellencamp sang, "Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone."
As it turns out, the zombies in "Shaun of the Dead" are creatures of habit. They may be brain-dead, but they can perform menial, mindless, mechanical tasks -- just like any real live working-class stiff.
I was led to believe that "Shaun of the Dead" was a satire on the modern British middle class. Ghoul Britannia, so to speak. Bangers and monster mash.
But "Shaun of the Dead" is universal in its import, a comedy with a tragic message. And the message is this: The greatest thing modern man has to fear is not death. It is life in death.