Near-perfect homage

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2010)

This is often marketed as a parody to Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead", but it's so much more than that. The clever writing makes this a movie with many layers. First of all, it's of course a brilliant pile-up of genre clichés and nods to the source material. It's been three days since I watched this movie and I'm still unbelievably amused by "We're coming to get you, Barbara". Then, it's a straight-forward laugh-out-loud comedy. My favourite moment in the entire movie is when they try to kill a couple of zombies by throwing LP's through their faces. That scene was already in the theatre trailer, so I must have seen it countless times by now, but it still gets me every time. Surprisingly, this movie also has some good straight-up horror value. I really didn't expect this to be so gory, the cartoon violence is definitely a plus and fits right in. I also liked how I actually cared about which characters lived and which characters died for a change. That's pretty rare in recent horror efforts, so it was unexpected to find this quality in of all things, "Shaun Of The Dead". Long story short: "Shaun Of The Dead" is effing awesome.