Shaun of the Dead
Composite Score: 81.93
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Peter Serafinowicz, Rafe Spall, Bill Nighy, Jessica Hynes, and Penelope Wilton
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Genres: Comedy, Horror, Action
MPAA Rating: R for zombie violence/gore and language
Box Office: $30.10 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Shaun of the Dead is the first of the Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright Cornetto Trilogy, this one featuring a story about an electronics sales clerk dealing with family drama and an upset girlfriend in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Its characters and scenes stand up as some of the most iconic to come out of the horror comedy genre, and it continues to be one of the best films in that category. As both a buddy comedy and romantic comedy, Shaun of the Dead brings much to the table, exploring the need for maturity in relationships against the backdrop of the end of the world.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
This is a film that hits different depending on when you watch it, and that carries over to its characters. Nick Wright’s Ed might be one of the least likeable supporting characters that I’ve had to root for in a while. Most of the criticisms leveraged against him by Liz, Dianne, David, and Pete throughout are accurate and well-grounded, coming from the perspective of an adult viewer as opposed to a freshman in college (the age I was when I first saw Shaun of the Dead). Shaun’s insistence on keeping Ed around for the whole film creates most of the film’s conflict and can make Ed a highly frustrating character on rewatch (also he does use the n-word at one point, which hasn’t aged super well). In hindsight, I can appreciate the desire to make Ed out to be not a great guy, but when I was in college, Ed represented a weird friend that didn’t deserve all the hate that he was getting. I’m going to give Wright, Pegg, and Frost the benefit of the doubt here and say that they meant Ed to be taken in a more frustrating and negative light, but my original take on the character shows the ambiguity that his portrayal brings to the film.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Shaun of the Dead’s take on zombie apocalypse looks like a scarily accurate portrayal of how the world would actually react to a zombie outbreak (given the experience we all just went through from 2020 on). Namely, people don’t register the outbreak as serious until they encounter it themselves, and by then it is too late to do much at all but buckle down at home or run out and drink with your loved ones. It is a satirically accurate portrayal of modern Western society and our disconnection from each other that is also packaged in a critique of the zombie-like stupor that many of us live our day-to-day lives in as well.
The film also does a good job, at least from an adult perspective, of tackling the issue of maturity in relationships and the potential issues that immaturity can bring to friendships, dating relationships, and even relationships with family. Shaun keeps Ed around as a friend because he likes him but also, because he’s even less of a success than Shaun, giving Shaun someone else to point out who is even worse than him at being mature and all that. In the same way, Shaun’s stunted sense of growth creates tension between himself and Liz, his girlfriend. Liz has goals and actually dumps him at one point because of his lack of drive and imagination, fearing that she’ll just end up stuck in a rut if she stays with him as he is. Even his relationship with Philip (Bill Nighy), Shaun’s stepfather, is strained due to Shaun’s inability to approach things maturely. When Philip is dying, he reveals that he only wanted to see Shaun succeed and be like a father to him, while Shaun, only minutes earlier, had been trying to talk his mom out of being married to Philip (a marriage of 17 years) on the premise that Philip had “touched him”, which was just a lie he made up because he wasn’t mature enough to deal with his father’s death and his mother moving on. Ultimately, the zombie apocalypse seems to be a little bit of a catalyst to push Shaun to grow a little bit in maturity, if only because Ed is now an undead Zombie and only really good for playing video games with.
Shaun of the Dead’s spot-on satirical take on the zombie apocalypse and its in-depth exploration of maturity in relationships help make it a lasting fixture on the list of Greatest Films of All Time. A complicated characterization that will most likely be misinterpreted by less mature audiences does little to hold back this first film in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. Streaming now on Hulu, check it out when you get the chance.
