"SHAUN OF THE DEAD" (2004)
Screenplay Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Directed by Edgar Wright
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
To begin, I must publicly offer my endless and most heartfelt apologies to
Terry Bell for having his DVD copy of this film for far too terribly long.
To continue, I must reveal to you a confession that just may surprise many of you: Until just last night, I have never seen "Shaun Of the Dead."
Yes, dear readers, you did read that correctly. I have never seen "Shaun Of The Dead," Co-Writer/Director Edgar Wright's breakthrough feature film as well as his second feature length directorial effort overall, and now that I have, I now understand what all of the fuss has been about over these last
11 years since its original release as it did not disappoint in the least. In fact, I am kicking myself quite a bit for not having seen it sooner and therefore, having been aware of the immense creativity and inventiveness that is housed inside of the mind of Wright from essentially the beginning.
I do remember seeing the trailer many years ago and feeling that it looked to be a film that I would indeed head out and see. But, for whatever reasons, when "Shaun Of the Dead" was released, I just never made it out to the theater to see it and once it hit home video, for whatever other reasons, I just never rented it and then, time passed, more and other movies entered my life and like so many films that I haven't seen, "Shaun Of The Dead" just found itself being swept aside.
And here is where Terry Bell enters the picture.
I met Terry Bell many years ago while teaching at a preschool where he was also employed part-time and in addition to his daily morning news duties as an on-air announcer/journalist on
Wisconsin Public Radio (yes, I do have my connections here and there). If you were to meet Terry, I really believe that you would be fully taken in by the immediate level of his sincerity, openness and kindness as he truly represents what a "gentleman" is and should be. He also does indeed carry quite the subversive streak to his spirit as evidenced by our mutual love of
Kevin Smith films and his natural sense of humor which can exhibit a high satirical streak when he wishes to share it. So, when he first expressed to me his massive enthusiasm for "Shaun Of The Dead," it didn't surprise me but it certainly did indeed inform me that if he found value to that film, it would be worth my time to view it.
And yet, I still didn't rent it.
Terry had invited me to his home to watch it on many occasions but I could never get my schedule to link up with his. So, finally, he loaned me his personal DVD copy of the film for me to watch at my convenience, to which I was most appreciative and definitely had the full intention of watching it right away.
But, upon a shelf, right my my television, it sat. For years...and again, to Terry, I deeply apologize.
Within those intervening years, I finally became officially acquainted with Edgar Wright via his two most recent films, the stunning, one-of-a-kind video game fantasia
"Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" (2010) and the outstanding apocalyptic science-fiction excursion and middle age ennui satire
"The World's End" (2012), In those two movies, I was witness to a filmmaker of immense talent, an undeniably feverish level of creativity and one who possessed a cinematic eye that is firmly unique, idiosyncratic and filled with a rare and downright joyously gleeful storytelling outlook.
Both "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" and "The World's End" felt as if Wright was randomly pulling every single idea from the inside of a revolving madhouse but in actuality, the films were so meticulously constructed and choreographed that if just one element were to be out of place, the entire escapade would fall to pieces. I distinctly remember as I watched both of those films, with my mouth often wide open in amazement, that I had thoughts that there would be no conceivable way that this high amount of energy and inventiveness could sustain itself for the entirety of the whole film and in both cases, I was happily proven wrong.
And still...for whatever reason, and again, even with the film just sitting right near the television, I still didn't watch "Shaun of The Dead."
Maybe it was possibly because I might have felt that the time for that particular film had come and gone for me. Maybe it is just me having some sense of fatigue with the whole zombie craze and petulantly, I was just going to be stubborn about it even though "Shaun Of The Dead" was far ahead of the full zombie resurgence in pop culture as it pre-dated
Director Ruben Fleischer's "Zombieland" (2009),
as well as
Author Max Brooks' World War Z (2006) and its
2013 film adaptation from
Director Marc Forster, plus of course, the hit
AMC television series
"The Walking Dead." (And truth be told, I am completely unfamiliar with most of those as well.)
Yet, something compelled me to just go ahead and watch the film last night, for maybe, the time was right. Something in the atmosphere or something just as ephemeral but yes, I placed the DVD into the player and began to take the ride.
As many of you are already so deeply familiar, "Shaun Of The Dead" stars the film's Co-Writer Simon Pegg as the titular Shaun, a 29 year old electronic store employee in suburban London, whose life is caught in a directionless rut.
Being disrespected by his younger employees, fraught with an estranged relationship with his Mother Barbara (
Penelope Wilton) and his Stepfather Phillip (
Bill Nighy), and enduring tensions with his flatmate Pete (
Peter Serafinowicz) over the endlessly annoying presence of their
other flatmate and Shaun's life-long best friend, the lazy, flatulent, perpetually unemployed (save for the occasional drug deal) Ed (
Nick Frost), would be bad enough. There is Shaun's long running yet tenuous relationship with Liz (
Kate Ashfield), now at the three year mark and stuck in the same groove of spending night after night at the local pub The Winchester...
with Ed plus Liz's flatmates the stuffy, bespectacled David (
Dylan Moran) and his girlfriend, struggling actress Dianne (
Lucy Davis of the BBC's "The Office").
After one broken promise too many, Liz dumps Shaun thus forcing him to seriously re-think the course of his life plus devise a way to return himself to Liz's good graces. But there's a little matter of a zombie apocalypse that has suddenly made an outbreak throughout the town, forcing Shaun and Ed to retrieve their friends and family to bunker down within The Winchester, which an army of hungry zombies have surrounded.
If there ever was a time to grow up and take charge of one's life, there is no better time than during a zombie attack. Is Shaun up to the task?
In being such a late arrival to the Edgar Wright party, so to speak, it was a strange feeling finally watching "Shaun of The Dead." It was kind of like reading a book completely out of order, starting with the latest chapters, then moving back and forth a bit before settling into reading the beginning, as conceptually, "Shaun of The Dead" serves the first installment of the self-described
"Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" of films from Wright, Pegg and Frost, which includes
"Hot Fuzz" (2007) as the second installment and "The World's End" as the final entry. Now that I am more aware of Wright cinematic aesthetics, it was interesting to see how far he has developed them with his more recent films but to then see how they originated...and to that end, just how skilled he was in the first place.
"Shaun Of the Dead" is a film that may essentially feel like a one-joke movie but is in actuality, a wonderfully multi-layered experience On one level, the film serves as an homage to both
Director George A. Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" (1978) as well as
Writer/Director John Landis' iconic amalgamation of horror and comedy,
"An American Werewolf In London" (1981), In addition to Wright's now signature visual razzle dazzle, Wright and Pegg's screenplay is filled from one end to the other with delightfully arranged witticisms and wordplay which is all delivered in a rapid fire style akin to a 1930's screwball comedy or a film starring
The Marx Brothers, making for a film that is a graceful as it is gory.
As a thriller, Wright just nails the sense of terror perfectly. As in the early films of
Steven Spielberg, Wright stages his story in a somewhat nondescript sleepy suburban area instead of London based landmark, thus bringing the extraordinary right in the middle of the very ordinary, which is first exhibited in a wonderful and unedited tracking shot where Shaun heads to the market from his flat, and we gather the mundane splendor of daily life in his neighborhood before it is all torn to shreds. As with
Writer/Director M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" (2002), Wright stages much of the apocalypse off-screen, which for me, increased the sense of paranoia and unease that exists for quite a long stretch of the film and remains steadily intact even as I was laughing at the dialogue and sight gags. No easy feat, handled brilliantly and I think that even John Landis himself would be proud.
I enjoyed that the arrival of the zombies was never fully explained in the film, which also created a certain amount of intensity. Any ideas of what is happening upon a larger scale are only depicted in quick flashes of newspaper headlines, abbreviated newscasts and very quick shots of abnormalities (people dropping dead in the street or flashes of persons running in fear through the camera frame, for instance) and seemingly innocuous moments that actually signify encroaching doom (people suddenly falling ill, complaints of headaches, coughing). These are moments that almost trick you into making you wonder if you saw and heard what you did indeed experience an d it is honestly effective and does provide the proper scares while not sacrificing any of the comedy. One extremely clever bit occurs while Shaun is flipping channels to try and find out any information and if you haven't seen the film yet, just try and solely pay attention to the audio from each channel, which is presented only in snippets and fragments, yet when strung together actually presents a full news update.
By the time, the zombies have been fully revealed, Wright continues to keep us off balance as he keeps mining the comedy even through some horrific gross out effects. When Shaun and Ed at long last realize that there are zombies right in their garden, the means at which they do comprehend the danger plus how they undertake measures of properly killing the zombies are sharply hysterical. If armed with only a stack of record albums, which ones would you use as a potential weapon? Prince? Dire Straits? New Order? The debates are hilarious and remain so, even as your palms begin to sweat. Then, there is another very funny sequence where Dianne takes center stage as she attempts to utilize Method Acting techniques for herself and her friends so they can surreptitiously make their way across town to The Winchester amidst swarms of zombies undetected. Just terrific physical comedy occurring just as you're waiting for carnage to blaze out at you.
Once the action moves to The Winchester and the scares, action and gore becomes more intense (one major character meets a particularly grisly end--NO SPOILERS if you haven't seen it), Wright still somehow finds ways to make the comedy and the overall uniqueness of "Shaun Of the Dead" stand out. One terrific fight sequence in particular, during which Shaun, Liz and Ed while brandishing pool cues take on one hungry zombie as the jukebox blares
Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" is as blissfully executed as the finest movie musical. Again, this sequence, which is a precursor to the dizzying, exhilarating and staggeringly choreographed fight sequences to come in "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" and "The World's End," shows just how breathlessly creative Wright was from the start.
But then, and most surprisingly, was that element of pathos I mentioned earlier.
In addition to action and horror, "Shaun Of The Dead" actually boasts a decent love story and one where the female (usually given short shrift and all manner of cliches in such a male-centric film) is actually given quite the conundrum which flies to an existential crisis. Kate Ashfield's Liz is presented as the stereotypical long-suffering and neglected girlfriend who is constantly brow-beating her man (in this case Shaun) for not being motivated. Additionally, they are a couple that never gets to be alone as Ed is always in tow, a reality that forces Liz to bring about her flatmates so she won't be lonely. The true crux of the relationship is The Winchester itself, the symbol of Shaun's ultimate inertia and the bane of Liz's existence as she wishes to not spend even one more night inside of the pub for this is where she has spent essentially every night for three years while dating Shaun.
Once the zombies descend upon the town and our heroes take up refuge inside of the Winchester, Wright very slyly plays the location as eliciting different responses and feelings from different characters. Where it is solace and comfort for both Shaun and Ed, it is nothing but purgatory for Liz. To think, that the place that she never wanted to set foot inside of again is the place where she just may be eaten alive by zombies. So, what to do? Either accept her doom or howl against the universe and try to fight her way out, and if she fails, at least some zombies will go with her. Her level of action perfectly suits what we know about her from the early parts of the film regarding her emotional maturity and her desire to live and experience life to its fullest. Certainly zombie fighting was not ever in the plans that she made for herself but she remains true to herself all the while, promising to go down swinging if she has to.
"Shaun Of The Dead" also carries the theme of arrested development as mostly viewed through the friendship, and therefore, love story between Shaun and Ed. While comical throughout, Wrigh somehow finds a certain sense of honest emotion in the proceedings to give sincere weight to the situations for our heroes as they grow more dire while trapped inside The Winchester.
With Ed, and especially after establishing him as a useless layabout, Wright positions him as being quite possibly the most prepared person to handle a zombie apocalypse because his mind dulled by a lifetime of playing video games has indeed made him the most desensitized to the whole affair. He actually kind of enjoys the arrival of, and therefore the act of killing zombies, as if he is living inside of a video game (shades of themes to come in "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World"). That being said, his heart is also the largest, most loyal and he makes one of the largest sacrifices in the film for nothing more than his friendship with Shaun, and I was surprisingly touched.
Then, there is Shaun himself who does indeed snap to life once the zombies arrive. Yes, Wright is clearly taking a page from the Romero playbook by suggesting that we, as a society, are already zombies stuck in our daily rituals on auto-pilot. But, in Shaun's case, we are given a film that charts his path into adulthood. For instance, it has been expressed that one never fully grows up until one's parent dies. In this film, Shaun is faced with the impending mortality of
both of his parents and he is indeed forced to make a fateful and honestly painful choice while inside The Winchester--easily the film's most wrenching scene and Simon Pegg really gives it all he's got on a most convincing dramatic level.
With both "Shaun Of the Dead" and "The World's End," Wright has given us parables that detail characters respective fears of the future. While the main character in "The World's End" attempts to keep the future at bay by trying to make his glory days of the 1990's last into his 40's and ultimately, forever, "Shaun of The Dead" features our hero trying his damnedest to hang onto the present for as long as possible so the future will just nt arrive at all. If everything remains the same, then painful process of change and then, growing up won't have to be endured.
But as the zombies attack, Shaun very quickly realizes that he has the capability to be a leader, to be inventive, to think on his feet, to discover untapped levels of bravery, honor, resourcefulness and to not just succumb to his worst and laziest impulses.
Since I had seen Wright's later films first and have seen essentially just how much further he has taken his unquestionable filmmaking gifts, that is purely the only reason that I didn't award "Shaun of The Dead" four stars. Think of it like this: Say the very first
Wes Anderson film you saw happened to be
"The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014) and
then, you happened to see
"Rushmore" (1999). I think seeing "Shaun of The Dead" now is akin to something like that. But no matter, I have just ordered myself my own DVD copy to add to my personal archives and I feel that I had better check out "Hot Fuzz" while I am at it.
And in the meantime, Terry, let's hook up, so I can at least, finally get your DVD back to you!
