Shaun of the Dead Review by Jordan

…Ahem…

Anyways, lets get to the review shall we?

Shaun of the Dead is a story about, you guessed it, a guy named Shaun.  Shaun is in somewhat of a funk.  His girlfriend, unhappy with their situation and the fact that Shaun never seems to make due with his promises, has dumped him.  His roommate Pete is unhappy with their other roommate (or I suppose ‘flatmate’ since the film is from England) Ed, who is a lay-about do nothing nobody.  His work situation is pretty poor since his co-workers show him no respect and the whole situation with his Mum and Dad (oh, sorry…Step-dad) is less than great.

Anyways as we follow Shaun through his daily routines we see little hints dropped here and there (mostly in the background through TV reports, background action, etc) that something odd is happening.  Of course Shaun, as detached as he is from reality, doesn’t notice that zombies are all around him and goes about his daily routine on ‘Z-day’.  When he gets home he flicks on the ‘telly’ and he watches as the newsman tells of a great emergency is sweeping the nation.  Meanwhile Ed, his flatmate, looks out the window and notices, "There’s a girl in the garden".

Here our hero’s have their first encounter with a zombie.  After some hilarious antics trying to figure out what the heck is going on, they come up with a plan.  They’re going to steal Pete’s car, pick up his Mum, pick up his girlfriend Liz, swing by the Winchester (the local pub) and have a cold pint while it all blows over.  Right, good plan there Shaun.  What they don’t take into account is that any time you come up with a plan in a zombie infested world things can and will go wrong!

This was a great zombie flick and well worth the wait!  I’m really surprised as there have been so many great zombie movies in the last little while such as Dead and Breakfast, Stink of the Flesh and now Shaun of the Dead.  Here I thought the Zombie genre was dead (no pun intended) but it is still alive (or is that undead?) and well!  Shaun of the Dead is a welcome addition to this often overlooked genre.

There are several things I enjoyed about this movie, which I have a hard time summing up.  The one thing that I REALLY enjoyed was the numerous homage’s to George Romero’s Dead trilogy.  In the opening titles for the film releasing companies they had some music from Dawn of the Dead.  The second reference was when Shaun is speaking with his Mum on the phone.  He tells her not to worry and they he and Ed are coming to pick her up.  Ed yells into the phone ‘We’re coming to get you Barbara!’  Classic reference to Night of the Living Dead!!  And the other references include Dawn of the Dead action music while Shaun explains their plan for escape, Shaun’s work that is called Foree Electronics (Ken Foree played Peter in Dawn of the Dead) and many more.

Now the movie wasn’t made great by just the homage’s to other movies.  Oh no no, the movie had excellent zombie effects of it’s own!  While there wasn’t an over abundance of gore, when there was blood on screen it was very well done.  The makeup effects team deserves a great amount of credit for their work on the film.  The zombies were very believable and very Romero-esque.

That’s another thing that I liked, classic Romero zombies.  The undead in this picture mostly fit in with the Romero zombies that we have all come to know and love.  There were certain parts that didn’t quite fit in with all that we know about zombies (the part where the characters all pretended to ‘be’ zombies to sneak by them).  But all in all they worked very well.

I thought that the movie had the perfect blend of action and comedy to make for a great viewing experience.  I don’t know about the rest of the people who have given this movie bad reviews, but I thought it was one hell of a ride and cannot wait for Edgar Wrights next film!  I think this young man definitely has one heck of a career ahead of him.