THRILL SCALE 1-10
4.5
HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?
Yes, multiple times
BEST SEQUENCE
Pool cues vs. zombie in the Winchester, set to the music of "Don't Stop Me Now"
BEST LINE
"David, kill the Queen!"
"What?!"
"The jukebox!"
- There are lots of great lines and sequences in this movie, so I don't want to make it seem like this scene is the only one I like, but I'd be lying if I didn't pick this line as my favourite
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE
92%
ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS
"Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit."
IMDB SYNOPSIS
"The uneventful, aimless lives of a London electronics salesman and his layabout roommate are disrupted by the zombie apocalypse."
DIRECTOR
Edgar Wright
MAIN CAST
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz, Rafe Spall
THOUGHTS
- I really love this movie, but it's honestly a little hard to review it as a horror comedy. I mostly appreciate it as a very funny comedy, with a fantastic script and great performances. I don't even necessarily think the humour undercuts the thrills. The zombie action is actually very well done, and there are fair stretches of the movie that are played quite straight, like most of the climax in the Winchester pub. However, when I'm watching Shaun of the Dead I'm doing it for the laughs, not the scares. All of this is to say, if you think Shaun of the Dead is more thrilling than the 4.5 I'm giving it, I can understand that argument, and it might even be a good movie to ease some of the more squeamish into the zombie genre
- Speaking of the zombie genre, I like that Shaun of the Dead isn't a direct spoof of specific movies that came before it. It takes some inspirations, but it definitely manages to be its own thing. I like the gradual way that this zombie apocalypse develops, culminating in Shaun's morning walk to the shop when he still doesn't realize what's happening, made even more clear when juxtaposed with his walk to the shop on the previous day when everything was still normal
- A while ago I reviewed three of George Romero's seminal zombie movies (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn/Day of the Dead) and nearly every zombie movie made since these ones owes a debt of some sort to Romero's films. Shaun of the Dead wears it on its sleeve as a loving tribute, but not just in the Shaun of the Dead/Dawn of the Dead title reference. My favourite reference is a more subtle one, when Ed yells "We're coming to get you, Barbara!" This is almost a direct quote from Night of the Living Dead and one of its earliest lines, "They're coming to get you, Barbra." Delightfully, George Romero had a private viewing of Shaun of the Dead, and he didn't even realize this was a reference until Edgar Wright told him. Romero also loved the movie, by the way
- As much as I love Shaun of the Dead, though, I think I actually like its follow-up more. I thought about reviewing the whole Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (so named because of their passing references to Cornetto ice cream cones), and I did in fact rewatch all three of them, but we'll just talk about them now. Hot Fuzz, a buddy cop action film, was the second one made in the series, and it's my favourite. The World's End, a sci-fi thriller, came third and it's my least favourite of the series (but I still think it's a lot of fun). Funnily enough (but not surprising, given the format of this blog), every movie in the trilogy directly references or parodies other movies that I've reviewed. As mentioned, there are the zombie influences in Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz even more obviously references Point Break, even going so far as to show clips of it in the movie itself. And finally, The World's End is a pretty obvious riff on Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
- Finally, I felt like mentioning, while I love all three of these movies for their genre pastiches and their hilarious scripts and performances, none of them earn the distinction of being my favourite Edgar Wright movie. That would be Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, made in between Hot Fuzz and The World's End. However, I also don't think any of these movies qualify as Edgar Wright's most thrilling movie - I only saw Baby Driver once, in the theatre, but I remember liking it a lot, and I've rewatched some of those incredible car stunt sequences many times, and I think I'm probably due for a rewatch
Up next: And with that, we have finished another block of Readers' Choice movies! So it's back into the American Film Institute's list of thrilling movies, and boy oh boy, do we have some good ones coming up. We're going to start with a movie that I'm a little less certain about, though, and also one that I'm not sure I've seen all the way through. We haven't heard from Stanley Kubrick in a while, his previous movie on the list was Spartacus at #62, but he's back - 2001: A Space Odyssey coming up next
