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Motivating the Dead
Shaun is in good zombie company
by Joe Tarr
Early on in Shaun of the Dead, a pair of legs stiffly, slowly stamp toward the screen, and we hear a deep groan gurgle up from the body.
It’s a classic zombie-like movement, but as the camera pans up the body we see the character is not undead at all, but the movie’s slacker anti-hero Shaun, waking up after another long night of drinking. The groan was merely a yawn, and he heads to the couch and grabs the TV remote. He flips through numerous channels, changing the station just as a newscaster is about to fill us in on the undead horror unfolding around England, where the movie is set.
If people really did start mutating into living dead, would the world be all that different? Would we even notice? Before we’ve seen a single zombie, we see lots of zombie-like humans, riding the bus, waiting in lines, watching TV, drinking at the bar.
The idea that zombies are quite similar to living humans in modern society prevails in most undead horror. And the best of the genre have a sense of humor. But Shaun plays up the comedy over the horror, which is refreshing.
Shaun is billed as a “romantic comedy with zombies,” but the romance is mostly (and thankfully) peripheral to the story.
Shaun (Simon Pegg—who co-wrote the screenplay with director Edgar Wright) is a 29-year-old wannabe DJ who sells TVs and appliances for a living. He spends most evenings at the neighborhood pub, The Winchester, with his even lazier, unemployed roommate, Ed, an obnoxious lout who annoys everyone but Shaun. Shaun’s frustrated girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), also hangs out, but mostly she’s had it with with the dead-end relationship.
With the encouragement of her snooty friends, David and Di, Liz dumps Shaun just as zombies begin to multiply around the city. The undead go unnoticed by just about everyone else until their numbers get too big to ignore. At one point, Shaun walks to the corner grocery store to buy a Coke and an ice-cream cone, completely oblivious to a bloody handprint on the freezer; he slips in blood as he walks away, and zombies slowly stagger after him unnoticed.
Even when Ed spots a zombie standing in their backyard, the two first assume she’s just drunk, and when she tackles Shaun they figure she’s hungry for loving, not human flesh.
Once they realize the crisis, Shaun sees it as an opportunity to prove himself, win back his girl and gain the approval of his mom by rescuing them both from the undead. Things, of course, don’t go as planned.
In recent years, the zombie movie has made a strong comeback. In the past year, there was the zombie-esque 28 Days Later (technically, the zombies weren’t dead—just infected with a rabies-like virus, but the set-up was the same) and a remake of Dawn of the Dead, the 1978 classic from the father of the genre, George Romero. (Playing off the new interest, Romero is in production on his fourth zombie installment, Land of the Dead, which is supposed to be released next year, with Dennis Hopper reportedly playing a human villain.)
Shaun also owes as much of its inspiration to the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which adeptly and smartly mixed humor, horror and social satire, in depicting typical coming-of-age problems as literal demons.
There are hundreds of zombie movies, and it might seem odd that so much film could be devoted to a pretty basic idea. But zombies are such a delightful metaphor to critique culture and society. Racism, religious extremism, Orwellian government, consumerism, totalitarianism, greed, violence, environmental catastrophe, and fanaticism of any sort are all easily portrayed as flesh-eating, slothful undead, wandering the vacant infrastructure of the modern world. Often with limbs missing or eyeballs dangling, they return to the places they find familiar—grocery stores, shopping malls, bars. In many zombie movies, the humans are shown as the more evil, because they should know better, but still plot and scheme for their own gain, rather than the collective good.
Shaun doesn’t actually parody the genre, which it clearly reveres. But it does inject a good bit of comedy. There are lots of funny moments, especially satire of the media and mass culture. But because the heroes are so unambitious and consumed with simple pleasures, we’re spared any elitist morals. In fact, the movie suggests that sloth is often the most sensible course.
Despite it being a comedy, there are some spooky moments and a bit of gore. When the story tilts completely into horror, it loses steam and the few attempted jokes misfire. As the movie reaches its climax, the plot and mood turn dark, almost nihilistic. Following an hour or so of good-natured comedy, it’s hard to take it seriously or care much about the characters’ fates.
But Shaun of the Dead is resurrected with a hilarious ending that is perhaps the cleverest resolution of any zombie movie yet.
September 30, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 40
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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