There’s a distinct thrill to be had in discovering a nascent filmmaking voice, particularly one that is teeming with assuredness, wit, and loads of formal acuity. Charting their journey as they climb the ranks from budding cineaste to established brand name can bring an immense amount of joy, leaving audiences eagerly anticipating whatever it is they’ll do next. Falling in love with a director’s work can be a gratifying experience, which makes it all the more disheartening to watch them fail. Granted, some viewers will choose to don blinders in order to take the bad with the good — the only reason anyone gives a shit about Damien Chazelle’s wretched Babylon is because it’s propped up by the laurels of the director’s earlier work, namely Whiplash and La La Land.
Edgar Wright is another such director who continues to steadily work, but whose second decade of projects has come nowhere close in quality to his first. The World’s End was sluggish and tired, dutifully closing out a thematic trilogy but forgetting to have much fun in the process. Baby Driver proved to be a novel idea for a nifty music video, but it could not sustain a full feature runtime with its paper-thin characterizations. And the less said about the embarrassing Repulsion pastiche Last Night in Soho the better. Of course, some will certainly disagree, but there was a time where it was easy to be genuinely enthusiastic for the Wright Stuff, beginning with his breakout zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. For anyone who has witnessed the recent string of failures in Wright’s oeuvre, revisiting Shaun of the Dead is a task understandably taken with some trepidation, but it thankfully remains a crackling feature, hilarious and whip-smart and genuinely loving of all things George A. Romero. It remains the perfect distillation of Wright’s talent and humor, holding up remarkably well in a saturated horror genre.
For Shaun (Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Wright), life could certainly be going a lot better. His relationship with girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) is falling apart, due to his complete inability to offer any sort of social life other than spending their evenings at The Winchester, his favorite pub. He’s stuck in a dreary retail management position at an electronics store, where none of his subordinates respect him. Mum Barbara (Penelope Wilton) offers the love she can, but Shaun’s strained relationship with stepfather Philip (Bill Nighy) tends to put a damper on the proceedings. Flatmate Pete (Peter Serafinowicz) is a hostile and irascible bastard. Shaun’s only real support system comes in the form of best friend Ed (Nick Frost), a crass slacker content with playing video games all day. Meanwhile, an ominous zombie apocalypse looms in the background, eventually taking center stage and forcing Shaun to step into the role of hero and do something about it.
In 2004, most American moviegoers were likely unaware of Wright and Pegg’s existence, but Brits knew them best as the minds behind Spaced, a sitcom co-created by Pegg and Jessica Hynes (who has a small role here as Shaun’s friend Yvonne). The successes of Shaun and 2007’s Hot Fuzz eventually made way for a special edition DVD of Spaced to be released in North America, outfitted with a glorious Drew Struzan-esque cover art. Despite running for only two seasons, Spaced was a wonderful showcase for Wright’s style and comedic sensibilities, brimming with his signature rapid-fire montages, quick cuts, snap zooms, and other various forms of camera and editing trickery to breeze through each episode’s narrative. It’s a style that Wright brings to all of his features, but one which translates particularly well to Shaun, navigating a tricky balancing act of never tipping over to one side of horror or comedy, deftly keeping things right in the satisfying middle through reverence and attention to form. One early sequence perfectly melds humor and terror when a pair of zombies stumble into Shaun and Ed’s backyard, necessitating our two hapless protagonists to work out how to dispatch them, from household appliances to garden tools to vinyl records (“Batman soundtrack?” “Throw it.”). Another celebrated moment finds Shaun and pals attempting to incapacitate a ferocious attacker, striking their opponent to the tune of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” as it blares on a jukebox in the background. Shaun is frequently uproarious, but when it’s time to knuckle down and demonstrate some brutal zombie carnage, Wright delivers beautifully, scaring up an implacable horde of undead and featuring a bevy of terrific gore effects. Which is to say, to misunderstand the film’s comedy and so regard Shaun as only a spoof is to write it off completely; Wright and co. have clearly done their homework, delivering one of the best undead-oriented horror films that can capably stand toe-to-toe with its famous subgenre influences and predecessors.
Revisiting Shaun in 2024, what really stands out is how much Wright foregrounds the human drama, even long after the flesh-eating festivities have kicked in. In a film replete with disembowelment, impalings, blunt-force beatdowns, stabbings, shootings, and even some automotive mayhem, Wright never loses sight of his characters or uses them toward allegorical ends, but instead keeps them and their feelings quite grounded and always takes them seriously. Shaun’s relationship with Liz receives the strongest arc, allowing him to grow from dismal partner to champion boyfriend by film’s end, but special attention must also be paid to Shaun’s frigid connection to Philip, finding earnestness in the two men reconciling before the latter becomes a member of the undead. Fans of Shaun can certainly rattle off their favorite bits — the echoed tracking shots to the shop culminating in a hungover Shaun oblivious to slipping on blood on the floor; Shaun’s channel-surfing inadvertently spelling out the gravity of the zombie situation; Shaun and Ed’s various plans at saving their friends and family and waiting for everything to blow over — but none of these work without Wright taking his human subjects as seriously as he does, even amongst the blood, guts, and silliness. In the two decades since Shaun‘s release, Hot Fuzz very well may have claimed the throne as Wright and Pegg’s magnum opus according to a plurality of cinephiles, and that film is likewise an outstanding feature. But what becomes clear with this much distance is that Shaun of the Dead is the more pure, mature, and formally impressive work, and the one that rightfully established Wright as a formidable expert of his craft.
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