I shouldn't have liked this...

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2005)

SPOILERS! BIG ONES!
I was definitely not the target audience for this movie in any way. I'm not from England; I'm not a man, and particularly not one with girlfriend problems; and I don't like horror movies generally, so all of the little homages to those sailed right over my head like a Dire Straits album flung by a desperate slacker. Not only that, since the US only gets Britcoms in small doses, I had no idea who Simon Pegg was; the only cast members I'd heard of were Bill Nighy of "Kiss Me Kate," and Peter Serafinowicz, whom I knew only as the (sexy) voice of (mega-sexy) Darth Maul.
So I shouldn't have liked this movie at all. But I really did. Bill Nighy's turn as the stepfather who ironically becomes most human just as he's about to turn into a zombie is magnificent, as is the much-discussed bit where Debbie instructs the little group in how to act like zombies to escape detection -- a moment that reminded me pleasantly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her "Scooby Gang." Much has been said about the film's social commentary, which includes the annoying -- and, at the door of the Winchester, potentially lethal -- ubiquity of cell phones. But beyond that, the movie works by not taking itself too seriously, yet at the same time showing real heart -- mostly in brief flashes, like the deaths of Philip and Barbara, but most so at the end: it takes a truly devoted friend to keep his zombified, "bitey" best mate tied up with a PlayStation in his shed (which Liz apparently doesn't mind, even though she couldn't stand Ed as a human).
Yes, it drags in places; David's crush on Liz is so obvious that it really doesn't need explication at such length in the pub, for example. And our hero and heroine are saved not by their own actions, but by a massive deus ex machina. But the movie's humor of the ordinary (Barbara, seeing Shaun's cricket bat: "Is that for the jumble?") makes a lovely background for the surreal events that unfold.
Thanks to seeing this movie randomly on cable, I'll now be looking up "Spaced," probably "Black Book," and other series that contributed cast members. Will I seek out the original Romero movies, or other horror movies given nods here? Probably not. David's death was much more gory -- and drawn out -- than even his whiny character deserved, and was about as much gore as I really needed to see. But I enjoyed "Shaun of the Dead," even when I clearly shouldn't have, and I'm glad to have stumbled, zombie-fashion, across it.