You'll Laugh, You'll Scream: Shaun of the Dead (Dir Edgar Wright, 1h38m, 2004)

 The zombie has long been a creature of metaphor; one only has to look at the work of their most infamous proponent, George A Romero, to see them as everything from stand-in for racism, to consumerism, to the horrors of war and even the advent of mobile telephones and the always-on nature of our society. Doubtless, was Romero here to continue making his fine homages to the shambling undead, AI, celebrity culture, and our ever-more zombified political classes would make for fine fodder, the latter taken up, albeit via aliens, by the short-lived political satire BrainDead. 

Away from the godfather of the zombie, 28 Years Later (2025), the latest in Danny Boyle's series, sees the undead as confrontation of masculinity, of religion and the British psyche, whilst the long-lived Walking Dead series, and the popular Last of Us games and HBO series leans into a decidedly American sense of personal survival against the unified hordes of the collective undead. Much to chew over.

Of course, no horror comedy tour is complete without a tour back home to the UK; we seem to have rather cornered the market in them as of late, expanding upon the substantial foundations of the house that Hammer and their ilk built. As a result, British horror comedy ranges from the blackly comic, such as the gritty Dog Soldiers that sees a squad of soldiers go up against werewolves, to the enjoyable dumb (too many to mention, but I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, Night of the Hell Hamsters and Lesbian Vampire Killers seem to belong to that great tradition of coming up with your poster first...), and the genuinely fantastic, the best being An American Werewolf in London, Ken Russell's enjoyably bizarre The Lair of the White Worm and Attack the Block. Oh and a little film called Shaun of the Dead. 

The first third of Edgar Wright's comedic "Cornetto" trilogy-a thematic nod of the head to, of all people, Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy-Shaun of the Dead themed around the strawberry Cornetto. Apparently. Shaun of the Dead sees Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote the film with Wright) as the titular Shaun, suddenly confronted by a zombie apocalypse of the Romero variety-there's a tongue in cheek swipe against the then newly released 28 Days Later's rage infected undead, and the undead remain at a shambling pace throughout. Against the zombies is Shaun and a good chunk of the cast of cult comedy Spaced, most notably Pegg and comedic partner, Nick Frost, who plays the well-meaning but oafish Ed, whilst cameos from much of British comedy, including Peter Serafinowicz, Dylan Moran, and beyond, pepper the film.

Shaun of the Dead certainly wastes no time in getting down to its undead gory business and it is during the film's opening credits, cut to "The Blue Wrath" by I Monster-the rest of the film's score is an amenable homage to, among others, cult Italian proggers, Goblin-essentially provides a comedic take on that concept underpinning the Romero films. Its central conceit is this; we are, as the film posits via its sequences of shambling masses going about the 9 to 5, already are zombies, mindlessly following routine. Shaun is no different: we see his morning routine of stumbling to the local shop for a hangover cure, and back to the house he shares with Ed and Serafinowicz's Pete-later reprised to great comedic effect once the zombie outbreak has begun, our shambling hero unaware of the slowly multiplying hordes

Yet, Shaun's (un)dead social life is cast into sharp relief from the beginning of the film; his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) dumps him for the endless repetition of their date nights, which amount to wanders to the local pub, and here the Curtisine rom-com half of the ZomRomCom kick into gear, Shaun (and thus Ed) risking life and limb so that the former can make up with Liz, and the duo can survive the zombie hordes together. This is where Shaun of the Dead stumbles a little in its shambling wandering around East London (Crouch End, in particular, the film's eventual goal, "The Winchester" being converted into flats in 2011). 

The "com" is certainly there, especially when the film has to dwell on our heroes impending mortality, and where Bill Nighy's laconic stern stepfather, Philip and Shaun's mother, Barbara (Penelope Wilton) are concerned. The RomCom elements also work perfectly serviceably, the rough story-beats of the early to mid 2000s British RomCom pegged out across the film's narrative, from the initial dumping to the attempts to win her back falling flat, to the reconciliation and beyond. All of it works relatively well in Shaun of the Dead's structure. The ZomCom is equally perfectly toothsome, some of the best lines coming when our heroes have to tiptoe (figuratively and literally) around the armies of the undead, with the buddy-cop camaraderie of Frost and Pegg also carrying some of the funniest lines in the film-the duo's initial encounter with the undead, from musicos arguing over throwing priced LPs, to brutal shovel related antics is one of the funniest scenes of Wright's entire body of work. 

Put it together, however, and there's occasionally a disconnect, the Richard Curtis RomCom aspects waylaid by the Romero hordes of the ZomCom, but in turn the slightly saccharine sensibilities of the RomCom hold back the bite of the zombie hordes; for all the trailing in the blood-stained footprints of Romero's work, Wright and Pegg's riff on the themes does play it a little safe and a little sentimental at points.

Nevertheless, it's a fine homage to the undead at their most thematically pointed, matched with an off beat romantic comedy where not even the threat of the apocalypse can quite stop our hero trying to make amends with his ex-girlfriend, and remains one of the great British comedies of the last 25 years. 

Rating: Highly Recommended

Shaun of the Dead is available via DVD and BluRay from Universal Pictures and streaming from AppleTV

Next week, and indeed next month, to films featuring musicians acting, beginning with From Here to Eternity, starring Frank Sinatra.