SHAUN OF THE DEAD
Directed by: Edgar Wright.
Produced by: Nira Park.
Written by: Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright.
Director of Photography: David M. Dunlap.
Edited by: Chris Dickens.
Music by: Daniel Mudford & Pete Woodhead.
Released by: Universal Video.
Country of Origin: UK. 100 min. Rated: R.
With: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy & Penelope Wilton.
DVD Features: Commentaries by cast & crew. Missing Bits - outtakes and deleted scenes. Raw Meat - casting tapes, Simon Pegg's video diary and special effects comparisons. TV Bits - includes an interview with Coldplay. A Zombie gallery. Zombie-0-Meter (zombie trivia). English, French & Spanish audio. English, French & Spanish subtitles.

As in George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead (1978), man-eating living corpses run rampant through a suburban community, this time in Britain. Shaun (Simon Pegg), a 29-year-old electronics store employee, has just been dumped by longtime girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) after she grows tired of his lack of direction in life. Shaun spends most of his time with his best friend and roommate Ed (Nick Frost). The two play video games all day and spend their nights getting "pissed" at their favorite pub, the Winchester. After much foreshadowing, the dead begin to roam the earth - and through Shaun and Ed's backyard. Finally seeing the warning signs, the two set out to rescue their loved ones and shack up in the place they love most - the Winchester.

Shaun of the Dead is first funny, then scary, and afterward surprisingly sad. Star Simon Pegg and co-writer/director Edgar Wright make these characters so absurdly lovable, that it is no laughing matter when one after another falls victim to Z-Day (as the film calls it). The slang-ridden humor is such that American audiences will have no problem getting the jokes, a lot of which are partial to fans of Romero and the genre as a whole. And the film is casual in its grimness as any zombie film you will find. There is as much bloodshed here as there are punch lines.

DVD Extras: The best extras is a trio of plot holes, where through narration and still drawings we are given the answers to some of the film's most frequently asked questions. In “TV Bits,” an extended mock interview with the band Coldplay proves to be an unexpected treat as the group’s surviving members discuss Zombaid, a post-apocalyptic relief effort. Interestingly, In Pegg’s video diary, the co-writers go through their flip-chart storyboard over a year before the actual filming. It's amazing to see how they managed to pull off almost all of their ideas. And the cast commentary is reckless fun, as the stars compare their Bill Nighy and Al Pacino impersonations while teasing a possible sequel - From Dusk Till Shaun.
Michael Belkewitch
December 31, 2004