Gold Standard of Zombie Spoofs

Rating: 7/10 (14 April 2020)

"Shaun of the Dead," with the title itself imitating those of George A. Romero's zombie films, such as "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), is a pleasant diversion from more serious fare in the subgenre, especially when, if like me, you've been viewing a bunch of zombie and other apocalyptic dramas during, as of this posting, the pandemic. The parallels between the yawning protagonist Shaun (Simon Pegg, also co-writer)--working a dead-end job, returning to the same pub night after night and playing mindless video games with his best mate Ed, much to the frustration of his girlfriend, who seeks more culture and varied experience--to thoughtless, slow zombies is even played purely for laughs instead of as some sort of social commentary along the lines of that with materialism in "Dawn of the Dead."
It's amusing, too, how Shaun's obliviousness to his surroundings is largely reflected in our understanding of the story. While there's some dramatic irony when the outbreak initiates, as the spectator will surely pick up on the escalating population of zombies surrounding Shaun before he realizes it, any explanation for the events remain elusive. Humorously, Shaun's first news of the epidemic on TV is cobbled together by his changing the channels, with words and phrases from each show adding up to a report on the undead. We hardly get a look at the newspaper accounts, either, and as soon as the TV is about to tell us what caused the outbreak, the boob-tube is shut up. Contrast this with, for instance, the rambling of talking heads about radiation from a Venus satellite in "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). There's also a funny reference to "28 Days Later" (2002), where the outbreak's supposed origins to rage-infected monkeys is dismissed.
The point is that it doesn't matter where the zombies came from or that they're an analogy for some real-world problem; "Shaun of the Dead," regardless, is going to do the same thing that's been done over and over again, whether it be drinking at the pub or being yet another zombie movie, to make light of it. If you're so bitten, like me, to have binged on numerous zombie movies already, such a sentiment is easy to appreciate.