Shaun of the Dead (2004) review

Yep, Shaun of the Dead is still the best comedy ever made. Part of what I admire so much about Edgar Wright and his collaborators, especially in this trilogy, is that they take stories that could very easily be extremely low effort, bottom of the barrel garbage and puts in the most effort anyone has ever put into a movie. In the wrong hands, this very easily could have turned into something dumb and gimmicky like Dead Snow, Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Cooties, but the team behind Shaun of the Dead knows what the hell they’re doing. If there was even 1% of the effort put into every blockbuster that there into this movie, every movie would be AT LEAST a 7/10.

Part of what makes the Cornetto Trilogy work so well is the dynamic between the comedic aspects and dramatic elements at play in the story. A trap that comedy movies often fall into is when it fails to be funny, there is absolutely nothing else that it has going for it, so the film often completely depends on the most subjective thing about it. If the humor in Anchorman or The Hangover doesn’t work for you, what is there to them that is of enough quality to carry the movie? The same can be said about horror movies. If it’s not scary, does it have anything else to offer? Shaun of the Dead happens to be both of those.

Where Edgar Wright shines is giving his movies a little (a lot, let’s be honest) bit more to them in terms of character writing, plot, themes, and reincorporation than the average filmmaker does. Even if you don’t find the trilogy funny, there is still layer after layer to enjoy each of the movies on. Remove the comedy from Hot Fuzz and you have a great police investigation action movie and a great movie about a workaholic trying to rebuild his life after a divorce. Remove the comedy from The World’s End and you have a great alien invasion movie and a great movie about addiction and the desire to relive the past instead of accept your past mistakes and the fact that you’re getting older.

Remove the comedy from Shaun of the Dead and you have a great movie about a man’s mistakes building up and coming back to bite him, no pun intended. From the very first scene, we see that Shaun is in a rut; he’s in a floundering relationship, he drinks too much, can’t keep a promise, has a strained relationship with his mother, an unsatisfying dead-end job, and most of all, his best friend Ed is a dead beat who does nothing but enable Shaun’s bad habits, continuing the cycle of being a totally mediocre zombie of a person, pun intended this time. As the film progresses, he is forced to let go of grievances with others that kept him in the rut he has been stuck in.

The zombie outbreak first takes away his roommate Pete, who had long been the voice of reason in the household, telling Shaun to stop defending Ed and calling him out for being a pushover. Pete’s overzealous negativity forced Shaun to constantly go up to bat for Ed, despite Ed offering nothing but complacency with the rut.

The next to go is Phillip, his stepdad who he constantly makes sure to remind everyone is his stepdad, not his real dad. His resistance to Phillip strained the relationship not just between the two of them, but between Shaun and his mother, leading Shaun to not even introduce Liz, his girlfriend of three years, to his mom even one time, despite his insistence in the opening seven that he is not ashamed of his mom when asked about it by David, Liz's friend who Shaun has an adversarial relationship with.

The sad truth at the core of an otherwise very funny film is that Shaun is incapable of changing for the better on his own. He cannot be an adult and confront Ed’s laziness, he cannot make amends with his mother and stepfather, and he cannot maintain a romantic relationship without an apocalyptic event to whip him into shape and force him to take meaningful action to better his life and the lives of those he is close to. That is what takes Shaun of the Dead from wacky comedy about some British drunks fighting zombies to being one of the best movies ever made. The title Shaun of the Dead, while a pun on Dawn of the Dead, is about how Shaun is surrounded by dead relationships, walking around aimlessly like the zombies.

All that depressing stuff aside, Shaun of the Dead is my favorite comedy for a reason. It’s hilarious. I’ve seen it more times than I can possibly count and it still makes me laugh to this day.

Despite seeing this a billion times, the amount of setups, callbacks, reincorporation and foreshadowing still blows my mind. It’s so dense that I STILL keep noticing new details about it with each watch. There’s so many in this movie that I couldn’t list off all of them even after I watched it an hour ago. The amount of moving parts in the script that come together absolutely perfectly astonishes me. The screenplay is incredibly efficient, with a flawlessly executed hero’s journey and three-act structure that is so well done it should be required learning in film school.

The editing is second to none, except maybe other Edgar Wright movies. The kinetic energy that the editing brings keeps the movie feeling like it’s always on the move, be it in obvious ways like the time lapse sequences during Shaun’s morning routine or when Shaun and Ed are brainstorming their zombie apocalypse plan, and in subtle ways, like in the sound design and in the way each scene motivates the one after it makes the flow of the story go by naturally and seamlessly. For example: Ed asks for a cigarette, Shaun says he quit, Shaun remembers he threw away his cigarettes at Liz’s place a few scenes before, Shaun calls Liz. Each and every scene and scene transition is that natural, both in terms of logical story progression and how the characters would be thinking during a situation like those the characters find themselves in. It’s executed so well that it looks effortless upon a first watch but each time I rewatch it I’m like “damn, this really is the most intricate movie ever made isn’t it??”

This is honestly the gold standard for screenwriting, visual comedy, editing, sound, pacing, character writing, horror, comedy, horror comedy, romantic comedy, zombie movies, fuckin’ everything. I think I’m about one watch away from just calling it the single best movie ever made.

Plus, it’s where the name of this website comes from.