It's a romantic comedy... with zombies!

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 2006)

*SPOILERS Of The Dead*
In 2004, a little gem arrived from Britain; a romantic zombie comedy (yes, you read that right) which was fun, romantic AND scary... practically a 'one of a kind'! But on to the story; Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a loser, who at 29 has a lousy job, and lives with a really immature best friend, Ed (Nick Frost), managing to unwittingly destroy his relationship with Liz (Kate Ashfield).
After having been dumped by her, Shaun decides to put his life into some kind of order; too bad the dead are coming back to life (but please, don't say the zed-word, it's ridiculous).
After finding out about it (and believe me, it takes a while) and noticing their third roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), has actually become a Living Dead himself, Shaun and Ed set on saving Shaun's mother Barbara (one character actually says 'We're coming to get you, Barbara!' - remember NOTLD?) (Penelope Wilton), Shaun's stepfather, who has been bitten (Bill Nighy), Liz and her snooty friends David (Dylan Moran) and Diane (Lucy Davis).
They have one destination; the 'Winchester' pub, the one where Shaun and Ed pass their whole days. Will they get there? And who will survive? There are some homages to famous zombie movies - NOTLD (one of the female characters vanishes into a flood of zombies), Dawn Of The Dead (a character is ripped apart much like Tom Savini's), 28 Days Later (won't tell... find it yourselves) - which for Living Dead Lovers (like me) are really the icing on the cake, and really funny moments; deciding what vinyls to throw at zombies ('Dire Straits?' 'Chuck it.' or 'It's the second record I ever bought!'), Shaun and a 'smiling' Living Dead Girl getting photographed by Ed, Ed's cellphone going off at a rather inopportune moment, Shaun missing out on obvious clues about the Living Dead (namely, one hysterical scene in which he does zapping and all the programs he watches complete each other's sentence which should drive home the message to Shaun... but it doesn't) and the funniest scene - when Shaun meets Yvonne and her own band of survivors, which mirror Shaun and the other five (as I have seen, also in TV work - 'Yvonne' worked on 'Spaced' with Pegg, if I'm not wrong, and there were Tim from 'The Office' - Lucy Davis is from 'The Office' too, and Fran from 'Black Books' - Dylan Moran (David) plays in it too).
And you just can't fault Romero, Tarantino and Peter Jackson for having liked this so much, and Romero for having wanted Pegg and Frost in 'Land Of The Dead'.
Shaun Of The Dead: 10/10.