07-09-05 Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Seen: August 31st, 2007 (and previous)
Format: DVD (and theater)
Rating: 7

It should be noted that Shaun of the Dead really has no plot. There's no real point to what happens. There's no real arc. Nobody really changes much or learns anything. It's basically a very large, running joke composed of references and reentrant gags.

But it's a very good joke.

I saw this film in the theater, and more recently on DVD. I saw Hot Fuzz in the meantime, which made it much more evident that Shaun of the Dead is not so much a parody as it is an homage. It's a bit rougher, a bit less honed and polished, but it exhibits a similar reverence for the zombie genre that HF does for the cop/buddy cop conceit.

This film's humor is a bit broader. The jokes and commentary are a bit more blatant. Offsetting this are the many subtle references to films including the multiple shot and musical ones which I only learned about from reading the trivia on IMDB*.

There's some excellent social commentary here. The direct comparisons between the lives of everyday people in their natural and zombified states are priceless.The exploitation of zombies, while a bit hyperbolic are no less cutting and poignant. The reactions of survivors to the zombified are telling too. How often do they stop to really think about someone that the encountered in everyday life?

Writing and acting here are top notch, showing the familiarity of the writers and actors via their time together on other projects. The film moves along nicely and the timing of the scenes both internally and sequentially is rather remarkable.

The one thing really lacking is a sense of purpose and direction to the film. There's not much, if any, arc here. This could be considered just another part of the commentary/homage to the genre, as most zombie films are concerned primarily with survival and little else. The act of keeping the body count as low as possible until the credits roll is the primary function of whichever group of protagonists the film happens to follow. The same is true here. But somehow I want a bit more. I suppose that I expected some sort of answer, some sort of final comment or revelation about the genre to come through the characters after their journey.

And we do get one of sorts. Perhaps it's the nature of that message that seems unfulfilling. Perhaps it's that commentary, which seems to say that it doesn't really matter whether we we're one of the infected or not, which is the most disturbing aspect of the film.

See this one if you've ever seen a zombie film and liked it ... or not.

*I love the good zombie film (and recently got to defend the position that zombie is actually a genre), but I can't claim a comprehensive background.

The Good: Zombies all around us

The Bad: A little light on plot

The Ugly: Child locks