Shaun of the Dead

by Mark Richardson

Mark Richardson is an undergraduate in philosophy at the University of Dundee. He has previously been published in Senses of Cinema and The Film Journal and is currently writing a book on drugs and revolution.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that I approached a screening of Shaun of the Dead. In my mind, I had memories - painful memories - of other genre-spoofs such as the Naked Gun series and Mel Brooks' Spaceballs. Thankfully, this caution was misplaced because Shaun of the Dead has much more in common with comedy classics such as Blazing Saddles than it does with Z-grade items like the Exorcist-spoof Repossessed!. Simon Pegg, star and co-writer of Shaun of the Dead, apparently wrote a dissertation on Star Wars whilst studying at university, so it should really have come as no surprise that the film is an almost fifty/fifty mixture of irreverent, screwball silliness and sophisticated, thought-provoking entertainment.

Back in the glory days of the 1970s, film criticism went through something of a renaissance, as Lacanian psychoanalysis became the critics' theoretical model of choice. And it was via this framework that critics came to assume that most of the zombie movies being made around that time were expressing an ideological fear of communism. The Cold War was at its coldest and the zombie was symbolic of the oppressed communist subject, entirely lacking in individuality, quite literally following the crowd… Rather brilliantly, Shaun of the Dead brings this analysis into the 21st Century by thematically playing with the idea that today's post-Cold War, 'late-capitalist' subject is likewise lacking in individuality. The luxury consumables may have different labels, but the products are the same; you may be the only slob slouching back on your particular couch, but ten people on your block are doing exactly the same thing, their jaded eyeballs barely focused on the same boring, formulaic television programs… Yes, there are indeed a great many zombies drifting through their meaningless lives today. Watch out, you may be one of them.

It's this way of life that creates tension in the failing relationship between Shaun (played by Pegg) and Liz (Kate Ashfield). The film opens with them heading rapidly towards both communication and relationship breakdown. Having settled a little too comfortably into a dead-end job after leaving college, Shaun's lack of ambition is challenged by Liz, who is offered moral support by her more upwardly-mobile friends. But worse is Shaun's slobbish housemate, Ed, whose only job appears to be drinking beer, eating takeaway food and playing computer games all day. Then enter the real zombies… Of course, it takes a while for the insular Shaun to even notice that the undead are scuffling past him at every turn. And, in fact, it's in these early scenes that the film's more profound thematic concern about the apathies of modern living are expressed, as the oblivious Shaun doesn't look much different from the zombies walking about in the background of the frame.

Director Edgar Wright (whose low-budget 1994 debut A Fistful of Fingers failed to impress, despite being something of a cult item) has produced a fast-paced, luridly violent and riotously funny comedy horror flick. Sure, the blood often looks like ketchup and some of the gags are a bit too obvious, but this is all part of the fun of watching a film which knows full well it's a pile of nonsense and isn't afraid to admit to being so. Besides the laughs about zombies being mistaken for drunks and jokes which play on the fact that even full-scale national emergency can't get in the way of the absurdities of British culture, there are also plenty of in-jokes for fans of both zombie films and British television comedy (from where most of the cast originate). But it can also be a serious film when it needs to be and the scene in which one of Shaun's family, infected by the zombie virus, has to be put to death has a pathos and a drama which rightfully puts Quentin Tarantino's death in From Dusk Till Dawn to shame. My one regret about the film is its failure to make full use of Kate Ashfield's talent for playing feisty female roles - but this is a truly small quibble. Put alongside works such as The Ladykillers, Withnail & I and Trainspotting, this film proves yet again that if the British film industry has successfully conquered just one genre, then it must be the low-budget black comedy.