Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Edgar Wright
Shaun lives a supremely uneventful life, which revolves around his girlfriend, his mother, and, above all, his local pub. This gentle routine is threatened when the dead return to life and make strenuous attempts to snack on ordinary Londoners.
29 connections found
View:
29 films that influenced Shaun of the Dead
What critics say influenced Shaun of the Dead
Director Edgar Wright both pays homage and pokes fun at the walking dead films that inspired "Shaun," specifically George Romero's cult classic "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" trilogy.
And like George A. Romero’s 1968 cult classic, “Night of the Living Dead” and its sequel “Dawn of the Dead,” sources of great inspiration for Pegg and director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the script, it has a certain irresistible B-movie charm.
To disable the lumbering, stumbling creatures, the conventional wisdom -- set in gravestones years ago by George A. Romero's classic shocker Night of the Living Dead -- applies.
From here on out, events proceed as they do in pretty much every zombie movie since George A. Romero invented the modern iteration of the subgenre with Night of the Living Dead in 1968: running back and forth madly, living people dying because they make stupid, easily-avoidable mistakes, balletic fight scenes set to Queen songs.
The only comparison I can think of is John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, but even that doesn’t come close to matching Wright’s note-perfect mix of humor, horror, love, and death.
Similar to “An American Werewolf in London” (1981), it’s a horror movie that’s funny, intelligent — and, yes — horrific, and seamlessly so.
Wright and Pegg, like John Landis in An American Werewolf in London, first give us funny, recognizable human beings, and then let loose the wolves and flesh-eaters.
For example, Shaun works at Foree Electronics (Ken Foree was one of the stars of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead); the video game that Ed is playing throughout the movie is Timesplitters 2, which features dimension-dodging zombies; a newscast says that the undead epidemic was due to rage infected monkeys, just like in 28 Days Later; and couple of Queen songs are used to great effect, with lyrics that match the scene ("Ooh, you make me live…").
The genre's modern-day innovator George Romero understood its inherent farcical qualities perfectly well; in his seminal Night of the Living Dead, we find a guy on TV summing up the zombie epidemic with "Ah, they're dead -- they're all messed up," and in 1979's Dawn of the Dead more than a few walking dead literally catch pies in the kisser.
Even in a grim rip-off like Lucio Fulci's Zombie there's the well-loved underwater face-off between a zombie and a shark (guess who wins).
Advertisement
This pays homage to the modern and original “Night of the Living Dead”, and the original and modern “Dawn of the Dead” with even some references to “From Dusk Till Dawn” , and there are so many I won’t point a lot out to you, but some are so blatant you’ll just laugh out loud (We’re coming to get you Barbara!) and some are so subtle you have to really pay attention, and not once will you see a reference to another film and roll your eyes, because writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright slip it in with such charm that some you’ll chuckle to and some you’ll just belt out laughing, and Romero somewhere is watching this film and smiling with much satisfaction.
Anointed by no less a personage than Peter Jackson (who knows a little something about zombies) as the "most entertaining movie I've seen this year," Shaun borrows from obvious sources (Dawn of the Dead, From Dusk Till Dawn) as well as less obvious (Seinfeld).
In the affectionately playful tradition of such comedies as "From Dusk Till Dawn" and "Bubba Ho-tep," "Shaun of the Dead" arrives as perhaps the first bona fide "rom zom com," or romantic zombie comedy.
While it may not be the first film to combine romance and the dead returning to life (off the top of my head, I can recall "Deadly Friend" and "Return of the Living Dead 3" for starters) but it is by far the best of them.
And Shaun references not only Romero’s gruesome series, but also Star Wars, the see-through-body bullet holes in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead and Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and the 1999 British TV series Spaced (on which Pegg, Frost and Wright first teamed).
(Trust me, Sam Raimi didn?t get where he is today thanks to critical hosannas for "The Evil Dead").
The gore scenes aren’t as virtuosic as Sam Raimi’s in The Evil Dead or Peter Jackson’s in Dead Alive , but they’re plenty splattery, and the lines are a lot better.
Advertisement
And Shaun references not only Romero’s gruesome series, but also Star Wars, the see-through-body bullet holes in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead and Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and the 1999 British TV series Spaced (on which Pegg, Frost and Wright first teamed).
Yes, even down to its very title, Shaun is an homage of sorts to the great entries in the decidedly narrow zombie sub-genre â including, of course, its namesake and the Citizen Kane of all zombie flicks, Dawn of the Dead, as well as the other two films in George Romeroâs Dead cycle, Night and Day, plus the Evil Dead movies and Shaunâs fellow British export of last year, 28 Days Later.