A few years ago, a friend of mine invited me over to watch a Zombie movie. I was excited as I considered myself a zombie fan and was looking forward to what he called a zombie comedy. We settled on his couch with the appropriate quantity of salty snacks and the movie began. Within the first five minutes, I turned to my friend, Shaun being his name, and said, “This is the best movie that I have ever seen.” There was something about the intertwining of the lines, the cuts from scene to scene, the bricolage of images and styles and genres, that simply spoke to me. Throughout the course of the film I was tickled, horrified, bemused, engaged, challenged, and moved to tears. Thus was I introduced to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. The film plays with so many different things that it is difficult to narrow down any one thing that the film is trying to say, so I will look at some ideas that the film touches on and discuss how that effected me.
First, is the opening credits. After a fairly engaging opening sequence clearly establishing the main players of the film, Wright places the credits. A clear shift in tone is made as, instead of the very human characters that we saw in the first scene, we are shown everyday humans acting like zombies. A group of men is seen shambling toward the camera in time with the music. THere is a group at a bus stop staring blankly ahead, who all glance at there watches simultaneously. The in the shopping center, staring at nothing as they scan their items in tandem. These images do a number of things. IN one sense they are saying that the real zombies are us (we?). Our modern life has made us into zombies blindly following a set of procedures and practices without any thought (false consciousness perhaps? or maybe Simmel’s blasé?) This is very apparent in that the protagonist is seemingly unaware of the difference caused by the zombies. As an audience we recognize the affect of the zombies in the film but Shaun seems unaware. He is so zombified by the plugged-in repetition that he doesn’t notice a bloody hand-print or even that he slips on blood. The most remarkable example is the couple necking outside of the Winchester. Before Ed and Shaun go into the Winchester we see the couple necking outside. When Ed and Shaun leave hours later we see the same couple ‘necking’ more furiously. When they react and then turn from the amorous couple, the head of the man in the couple is chewed off. Or perhaps when connected to the television story at the end of the film we see that the living zombies of the beginning are no different than the living dead of the end. They maintain their primal instincts which consist in playing video games, pushing shopping carts, and humiliating themselves on television game shows and talk shows. These tasks seem no different than the ones that were shown in the opening credits; mundane, repetitive, and escapist. It seems that one of the many issues being discussed is that we are the monster, and that the monster is far more subtle and dangerous that we ever realized.
What I find most interesting in the film is its ability to take a horror sub-genre like a zombie film, and layer it with socio-political commentary (which is not entirely unexpected), and then fill it with emotionally resonant human characters. Shaun is no hero. He is in every sense of the word, average. He has not the marquee good looks. His job is no heroes duty. He has no real skills. He is quirky and bland at the same time. His girlfriend is certainly average by film standards (granted that in the real world she would be quite lovely). He has friends and family whose relationships all feel authentic. This is where the real brilliance of the film takes place. It is a comedy. While tragedy, to which horror is most closely related, has heroes that are by necessity larger than life and better than ourselves (thank you, Aristotle) comedy is about the common man striving to be better than he is, and failing. Shaun wants to be better. He has an ideal that he strives for, but he fails. This is comedy. And if comedy is about us and what consistent failings we do have, then by placing comic characters in a horror context we identify more with the fear, terror, and sorrow they feel. They are us, so we feel more poignantly the loss that they feel. I recall the first time seeing the film, having my heart rent by death Phillip, Shaun’s step-father. In a straight horror, the death would have been sad but not with the depth that it has in this case. We all laughed at the imagination of Shaun’s plan to save his Mom and kill Phillip. Their matter-of-fact discussion of planning his death is hilarious. Laughter has the power to endear us to people and comedy is about us, so when the reality of the horror of death sets in, we are caught off guard. We feel the sorrow and loss of Shaun as we would feel it because he is us, and not as in tragedy someone better than and therefore removed from us. Phillip’s death is the death of our own imperfect relationships. Similar situations have been portrayed but without the same effect in more serious zombie films and it is due to not framing it as a comedy. There is an old theatre saying, “They will only cry as hard as they have laughed.” And this holds true in this film.
There is much more that could be discussed regarding this film, but the layering of sociopolitical commentary and poignant personal emotion into this horror film sets it above many other films of its ilk. In many ways, it could be the zombie film that finally gets it right. George A. Romero’s films are too serious and films like Return of the Living Dead or Zombieland are too silly. This film marks a master of genre fusion who understands his craft and his audience, and most importantly, the things that matter enough to make it work. This is no piece of fluff that is to be seen and dismissed. It is so much more. It is us.
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