Shaun, played by Simon Pegg, spends the first part of the film being rather pathetic and having no real direction in life. Things are changing all around him, and he doesn't seem to be able to keep up. His lack of motivation, ambition and responsibility is deterioration his relationship with girlfriend Liz and his increasingly harder to defend best friend Ed is becoming a burden on his shoulders. Essentially, Shaun is a loser, and an unlikely hero. Post-breakup, Shaun tries to find focus and direction so as not to end up at the pub every night, drinking himself to death, wondering what the hell happened. In the midst of getting his life together is a full scale zombie outbreak and an opportunity to prove himself. This scenario makes of him an antihero. Pegg gives a fantastic and very real performance that is both hilarious and touching.
Ed, Shaun's best friend, is played by the wonderful Nick Frost. Ed is particularly apathetic and lazy. He's not really going anywhere in life and doesn't particulalry care. Frost's acting has a sort of naive quality to it that makes him a very real and natural actor. It's very easy to be charmed by him. The real life friendship between Pegg and Frost gives them a wonderful chemistry on screen and perfect comic timing.
Liz, played by Kate Ashfield, is the voice of reason in the film. She is the sensible, straight character that grounds the people around her. She wants more from life and is generally more motivated than most. With the exception of Shaun, the women often take much more initiative that the men. The relationship between Shaun and Liz is pretty much dead, but interestingly, it's the undead situation that resurrects their couple in the end. Peter Serafinowicz plays Pete, a role that was written with him in mind. Serafinowicz is wonderfully brilliant at playing the perfect asshole. Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis play well off each other as the couple David and Dianne. Both their performances have a lot of subtleness to them that reveal more than is said. Dianne has such heartbroken and hurt expressions when David exhibits little behaviors that indicates his love for Liz. David is insufferable, but is right most of the time. He never really gets to redeem himself since he gets eaten before he can appologize. Shaun's stepdad, played by Bill Nighy, is built up as a monster, but he really ends up being a sweet man. Sadly, right after Shaun realizes this, he becomes an actual monster. Shaun's mum is really sweet and a little naive. Penelope Wilton's performance tugs at the heart strings. She adds a lot of subtle behavior even when the focus is not on her, notably in the care of the bite on her wrist. When she finally does become a zombie, Wilton has a very troubling and haunted quality to her expression. It's very unsettling.
An element I find particularly fantastic, is that the film doesn't follow the heroes that will save the world from this breakout. It follows the average people who attempt to survive, but don't really have the skills set to properly defend themselves. They are ill-equiped to fight and have a hard time using weapons such as guns, even though they play lots of video games. The interesting bit is that we see a group of people that are much better and more heroic. Yvonne and her group are shown in a miror image that reflect our heroes with their much better dooplegangers. Yvonne reappears to save them at the end accompanied by a military force that always reminded me of UNIT. All in all, even though we follow the "losers", they are wonderful characters to which we become very attached.
The film starts in a very normal way without horror references. It gives the audience the chance to be acquainted with the characters, that are presented, I must say, very efficiently. I like that the film is set in a very suburban backdrop instead of the touristy parts of London. The people that appear working and living in the opening credits can be seen as zombies throughout the film. This segment presents life as being, for most people, mundane, mindless and repetitive and most of us are staggering through life like, well, zombies. What struck me the most was the scene in the bus. Not having a car, I was sitting in a bus recently and realized how much bus rides really look like that...it's uncanny.The first inkling of zombies occurs in a wonderfully mirrored scene of the first morning. As the breakout progresses, our protagonist carries about his routine without noticing the trashed cars or the pool of blood he slipped in. It slowly comes to his attention, but something always distracts him just before he realizes. The place of the media in this film is rather interesting. In the beginning Shaun sees various clips of television shows, notably the news channel, which is a good portal to explain the events. Many of the same shows reappear at the end of the film and we see how they are affected by the zombie crisis. Like many of the characters in the film, even though they are living through a traumatic and life threatening experience, they are still wrapped up in their little problems. The woman on Trisha is still dealing with her relationship with her husband and the main characters are still having tiffs in this potentially fatal situation. This is particularly apparent during the stand off in the pub. It's rather ridiculous to be fighting over who's in love with whom and who's jealous of whom when very real dangers are all around them.
What I love about the films these actors/writers/directors give us is that no matter how outrageous and silly the situation, there is always heart to it. Their works are very versatile; amidst the hilarious moments, they never shy away from dramatic and touching scenes. Fundamentally, the characters feel real and no matter how silly or ridiculous the situation, there is always a sense of truth.
From the beginning, the sense of humour is clealry that of Pegg and Wright with a little twist of Frost. The extremely witty dialogue and fast pace editing make for a brilliant film. Many scenes are mirrored throughout the film and many moments are self referencing. A lot of the dialogue is premonitory. There are many examples of premonitions during the film, such as Ed saying "Next time I see him (Pete), he's dead." which of course he is and when Pete says "You wanna live like an animal, then why don't you go live in the shed?!" in the end, Ed does just that as a zombie. However, the most complete moment is Ed's plan of what to do with Shaun post breakup. He basically lays out the entire film in that instant. He says that "we'll have a bloody mary first thing" (the next morning they find a girl in the garden called Mary), "bite the king's head" (reference to Phillip), a couple (David and Dianne), little princess (Liz), stagger back here (impersonate zombies to get to the Winchester), bar for shots (reference to the riffle). Now, how's that for a slice of fried gold?
Shaun of the Dead is chock-full of details. Everything that is significant is red. This color appears here and there in the film: the red car, the red headband, the red button for the lift at the end. These are all objects that are of importance to the characters or the story. There is a lot of stuff going on in the background; you could easily watch this film without even looking at the main characters. Many great zombie moments happen in the background while other things are going on. Another zombie detail is that all of them are wearing very muted colors, like beiges, greys and browns.
For Spaced fans, there are a few references here and there. Some appear in the form of a joke reprised from the series and others are more subtile. If you look closely at some of the scenes near the pub, like the one in the picture to the left, Tyres appears as one of the zombies. Another nod to Spaced is the short conversation between Shaun and Yvonne, played by Jessica (Hynes) Stevenson. Their conversation really feels as if Tim and Daisy moved on and are catching up.
Tarantino most visibly marked the beginning of a new generation of filmmakers that have consumed large amounts of films, video games and comics. The influence of this immense baggage of knowledge seeps in through their work. In this and other works, both Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, who co-wrote Shaun of the Dead, include references to many zombie and horror films. Now, I'm a total scaredy cat. I still have nightmares of Doctor Who episodes I've seen 3 years ago, so I’m not a great connoisseur of horror and zombie films. However, according to what I could gather from extra features and such, the film draws a lot of inspiration from Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) as well as a few more. The title automatically tips off that the film pokes fun at the genre. However, this film must not be confused with a spoof. Being a comedy, it's easy to think it's a mockery of these films. Shaun of the Dead is not making fun of this genre, but rather paying hommage to it. It's a comedy in which there are zombies. The characters themselves are comical and sometimes silly, but the zombies themselves are never really ridiculous. They are very real source of danger and some bits are even frightening.
The DVD has a lot of really fun extras. It features the trailer, photo galleries, bloopers, deleted scenes and extended bits of the tv shows, which are hilarious. There are also two entertaining commentary tracks, plus a storyboard and Zomb-o-meter track. What I particularly like are the plot holes explained via comic strips by Oscar Wright. Some extras expose the special effects while others are just fun tidbits. It's definetly a DVD worth getting and exploring. If the impending doom of World War Z happened tomorrow, how would you survive?
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