Self-slaughter

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2007)

Shaun of the Dead treats itself the same as the zombies it features: does itself in with a blow to the brain. For one-half to three-quarters of an hour, it's an observant and inventive comedy about a meek, clumsy loser, played and shot with much originality; so much that it sometimes skirts incomprehensibility. One can still work out what's going on; the big fault in this section of the film is the sameness of it: the jokes all have a nearly identical tone and substance; it's all really one long joke about the hero's schmoiness, and so eventually it becomes rather tiresome, in the manner of the TV series "The Office." It doesn't go anywhere, doesn't develop--but soon we find out the filmmakers didn't mean it to; it's all been a set-up for what they really have it in mind to bring us, which turns out to be a parody of George Romero's zombie movies. This is a letdown at first, if one was interested in seeing where the characters' lives were heading; and then it becomes a retardant: the longer it continues, the shorter a distance the script has to go and the less it has to say, until by the end it's stopped going anywhere or saying anything. A parody of the Romero movies was unnecessary; they were already parodies of themselves, and had exhausted the possible variations in zombie-bashing slapstick, by now an old and stupid trick. I'm not high on comic gore anyhow, I don't find pain and death funny; but on this occasion I especially resented its taking over: it got the movie in the head, too.