#13. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

(director: Edgar Wright; starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield and Bill Nighy)

There was a time, long ago and far away, when the zombie movie as created by George A Romero was just as much about social commentary as it was about zombies (for the uninitiated, see Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978)). While Shaun of the Dead might at first strike some as being a parody of cheesy zombie flick conventions, it actually was more true to the genre’s origins than most recent ‘serious’ attempts, simply by replacing Romero’s straight-faced social commentary on complacent consumerism with wink-wink social satire on, well, complacent consumerism. The protagonist (who admits himself he’s a pretty lousy protagonist) is so self-absorbed with his day-to-day girlfriend, family, flatmates and work struggles that he and best friend Ed are hardly aware that a Zombie Apocalypse is unfolding around them until it is already well underway. One of the best parts of the movie involve two long tracking shots following Shaun out of his apartment, across the street to pick up a paper and Cornetto and back home again, once before and once after the undead have risen from the grave, and watching as he scarcely notices the difference. This film rewards greatly with repeated viewings as they find countless gags and one-liners that are repeated throughout the film in radically different circumstances (“you’ve got red on you”), the final message seeming to be that for many people it will take the end of the world to get us to break our moribund day-to-day habits, and even then we don’t change very much.

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