Plenty of laughs and a fair amount of gore

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2012)

Having enjoyed the television series 'Spaced' I was keen to see this film as it features many of the same creators. Here Simon Pegg plays the eponymous Shaun, a salesman in a dead end job who lives with his best mate Ed who just lazes around playing video games all day before spending the evenings down the pub with Shaun, Shaun's girlfriend Liz and her friends Dianne and David. His life is so mundane that he doesn't notice that the streets are slowly filling with the walking dead. When he finally does notice he decides that he and Ed must go and rescue his mother and his now ex-girlfriend and seek sanctuary in The Winchester. Things are complicated by the fact that his step father has been bitten and the area around the pub is crawling with the living dead!
While this is primarily a comedy there should be enough gore to please horror fans; in fact I suspect they will enjoy the comedy more too as they will spot references that those not familiar with the classics of the zombie genre, like me, will miss. The story is pretty basic but that doesn't matter; extra subplots would just have been a distraction. The acting was pretty solid; Simon Pegg was ideal as Shaun and Penelope Wilton and Bill Nighy were great as his mother and step father; both providing some surprisingly emotional scenes for a film of this type. There is a fair amount of gore; once or twice things get extremely gory however it isn't really dwelt on too much. Fans of 'Spaced' will be pleased to see Jessica Hynes even though her role is much smaller here. If you are in the mood for a horror film but also want a good laugh then this could be just the film you are looking for.