When Harry met Sally--and Zombies

To those hardcore zombie fans who fear spoofing the original Dead trilogy (Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead) is blasphemous, fear no longer; even the trilogy’s director, George Romero, called Shaun of the Dead an absolute blast. And a blast it was. Anybody who loves a certain old-school Michael Jackson music video should love this British rom-zom-com—Shaun is 99 minutes of Thriller-wonderful.

I am naturally suspicious of any movie in the horror-comedy genre, perhaps because I’ve had the misfortune of seeing the entire Scary Movie franchise. However, Shaun pulls it off with panache. It has everything a good horror-comedy film should: a preposterous plot-line, jokes that make your stomach ache with laughter, fantastic-looking zombies, plenty of gore and, perhaps most importantly, a character so annoying that you cheer when the zombies eat him alive, innards first.

Shaun is the story of the title character, a down-and-out recently dumped Londoner who works with a bunch of teenagers at an electronics store by day and drowns his sorrows with his friend Ed at the Winchester Pub by night. When the zombies first begin taking over the human race, he and Ed are in fact so oblivious that they think all of the zombies are just a bunch of drunks recovering from a bender.

Once the duo realize that the zombies are in fact zombies and not fellow alcoholics, they arm themselves with a cricket paddle, a hockey stick and a stack of old records (”Dire Straits? Chuck it!”) and set out to save Shaun’s mother, Shaun’s ex-girlfriend Liz and, unfortunately, Liz’s two annoying roommates. The sextet tries to think of a safe place to weather the storm, and what better place to wait out the apocalypse than The Winchester Pub (of course!). The bulk of the film consists of the protagonists trying to make their way through the zombies to the safe haven of their beloved pub.

To recount the jokes here would spoil the fun of watching the movie, but Shaun contains a lot of humor, some subtle, some anything but. My only quibble with the movie is that the climax seems a bit obvious considering the rest of the movie’s ingenuity and wit, but it was so fun getting there, and the falling action was so redemptive, you’ll hardly notice. The acting is spot-on, the wonderfully British humor is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, and there is plenty of really graphic gore to boot. This movie is sure to please anyone without a weak stomach.

Look for Shaun of the Dead to become an instant cult classic.