brilliant comedy, but a bit too zombieish for me

Rating: 7/10 (30 July 2005)

Shaun of the Dead is an interesting creature. A movie as clever as it's title, the best part of this stylishly filmed movie is it's sly first half hour, in which the film makers taunt the audience with a series of goofy take-offs on standard zombie film making. The movie takes its time to get to the Zombies, starting by involving you in the lives of the characters, but while this was the flaw in The Birds and Jurasic Park, it works great here because the non-zombie scenes are lots of fun.
The movie slides from relationship/buddy comedy to horror movie as it goes along. It's a nicely done slide that takes you deeper into the more suspenseful part of the movie without being jarring and it never loses its sense of humor, but one scene was way too gory for me (if one scene were toned down I would probably give this an 8) and the attempts at drama tended to be flat. But while I wouldn't call it a perfect movie, it was a movie of perfect moments, and well worth watching if you can deal with a little gore (very little by the standards of the Zombie genre, but a fair amount by the standards of the buddy picture.)