Finally, some romance in the movies! Who wouldn't want Simon Pegg to fight zombies for you?

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2004)

My favourite horror sub-genre is without a doubt the zombie flick. There's something much more creepy about a horde of rotting corpses feeding on people than any mother-obsessed stalker of scantily-clad teenaged girls, or creepy Japanese girls stalking single working mothers (don't get me started on that!). There's usually a formula to most American (and British) zombie movies:
1- group of survivors hole up in a refuge. 2- the government or government agency is responsible for the zombies. 3- said government, particularly the military, cleans up its own mess to save the day. 4- the zombies are slow for a reason- so that while they slowly swarm the 'refuge', internal tensions amongst the survivors escalate to the point that escape seems impossible. 5- the zombies are easy to handle until loved ones join the undead. 6- set the comedy dial to black. 7- and this is most important from an academic perspective- that the zombies are merely an extreme incarnation of the society we live in.
Recent zombie films have tried some interesting variations on this formula, but they just don't satisfy. The key is to follow that formula to the letter, and have fun with it. Which brings me to Shaun of the Dead. This film is brought to us by two-thirds of the team behind British comedy series Spaced, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Fellow Spaced team members, Jessica Stevenson (as seemingly female version of Shaun), and Nick Frost (as Ed, Shaun's best friend) also star in the film. Shaun of the Dead does all of the above and more. Finally, some romance in the movies! I personally would love Simon Pegg to fight the undead for me. Highlights include Shaun's walk to the shops after a big night out (in which he pays more attention to whether he's buying coke or diet coke than the bloody handprints on the fridge door), great use of a Queen track (yep, its better than Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne's World- thats a big call, but I'm not afraid to make it), and of course, the record hurling approach to fighting the undead. It may come as a surprise that this film is distributed by a subsidiary of Working Title Films- whose romantic comedies, with the possible exception of Bridget Jones's Diary, appear obsessed with selling Britain back to itself. That aside, Shaun of the Dead is more successful than fellow Working Title production Wimbledon, which attempts to blend the romantic comedy with the sports movie, because it successfully blends the conventions of the romantic comedy with the zombie formula. Its what we've always wanted, isn't it folks?