Any movie critic can tell you what a newly released DVD is about & spoil the ending for you. I plan to ruin your entire DVD watching experience by highlighting it's flaws, it's missteps, it's examples of poor editing, casting, and point out the ridiculous holes in the plot. If you're cynical, you'll appreciate this valuable service I'm providing. If you're easily impressed, then don't say I didn't warn you.  - Mean Jean

Until "Shaun of the Dead" came along, movies about ambulatory corpses have always failed to fully exploit the inherent comedic potential. Such films are nothing more than an untapped humor keg, since the subject matter is not a convincingly scary enough premise to justify making a horror movie about, I've always felt. This has always been an frustrating reality of movies of this genre. "From Dawn Till Dusk", came close to poking fun at the ridiculous, but then even it changed direction toward what's safe & familiar & dissolved into a run of the mill horror flick hodge podge. Finally a flick I can appreciate, about the problem of dead people coming to life, with witty repartee, realistic human responses to danger, very few "Hollywood-isms" to bail people out of tight spots, and long awaited for answers to questions I've always considered every time a zombie movie came out. Like, 'what type of predators are zombies- scent based, or visually oriented?' 'How come people can't just out run them, since death apparently has a deteriorative effect on a zombie's gross motor skills & coordination?' etc. 

These questions are skillfully batted away in the movie and in my favorite part of all of the behind the scenes stuff, helpfully called, "Plot holes". I have never seen a movie so honest with the audience before, so ready to focus a scathingly critical eye on themselves & attempt to remedy problems they identify rather than just leaving them in the script, assuming people are stupid enough to swallow it just because. That one helpful feature saved me from having to write an entire paragraph of complaint! 

But anyway, onto the plot of this movie of high hilarity. Shaun is a plain old guy, nothing spectacular about him at all. He is climbing his way up the entry-level appliance sales ladder at work. Just like a guy, he's not the most observant critter occupying the planet, barely noticing that life around him is turning distinctly sinister & weird, and his relationship needs more attention & action than he's been giving it. This makes for many wildly funny moments in the film, such as his attributing the zombie like characteristics of one of the living dead for drunkenness. But it also lays the foundation for his relationship to falter. He is a master of habit, to the frustrated disgust of his girl friend, who would like to go somewhere other than the same old pub every night to see the same old crowd of people. The girlfriend's ennui convinces her that she is missing out on a more exciting life by staying with someone so desperately ordinary as Shaun. A normal dude with a simple life in England does not offer her the antidote for malaise she is seeking, so she dumps him over his vows of protest that he will change. 

This starts off the roller coaster thrill ride® day in Shaun's life when the dead refuse to follow the laws of biology & remain that way. Shaun the unobservant is forced to see that the weirdness swirling around him is coming closer to bite him too. His concern to rescue his mom & now ex- girlfriend propels him to do what is right & courageous, with the help of his comedic foil & drug dealing buddy, Whathisface. The motley crew of stragglers they shepherd safely to the place they envision as a fortress, the famous 'Shaun's last stand' in the ocean of hungry zombies, the pitfalls & turmoil experienced in their noble quest are scenes you'll laugh at every time you think about them. 

A strength of this movie is that it was entirely made by people living outside of  Hollywood's artificial & formulaic constraints. In this movie, the weapons are realistic, no one stumbles upon the magic basement full of long handled hatchets & Grandaddy's old Japanese warrior sword he brought home from WW2. Nope, just like the useless junk you store in your shed, that's what they are forced to fight with. 

Although this is a zombie movie, it bears little resemblance to other zombie movies that have been released throughout history. It follows the ubiquitous rules of killing them, and that's about it. It is a fresh & original working over of a disappointing swamp of movies that have all but become clones of each other, complete with interchangeable scripts, characters, conflicts & lines. This is a movie so fresh & funny that you will want to buy it new! Buy it quick! You won't regret it. 

On a more serious note, I hate to ruin a surprise, but the saddest part of the movie is in the bar, when the stupidity of England's 1997 complete ban on private ownership of guns is fully realized when no one of the 7 able bodied adults trapped & completely surrounded by the walking undead that want to eat them, know how to load, cock, or fire the bar's rifle. Want more grisly statistics that will keep you up at night, terrified? In real life, according to local papers in England, crime has not gone down at all since the ridiculous sweeping ban on man's second best friend. In fact, there are still plenty of gun crimes there. Armed crime rose in England 10% in 1998. That's 1 year after the ban, in case you missed that. Since now English criminals are the only ones in all of Britain who own & know how to use guns, the safety of the general populace has been incredibly compromised by law abiding citizen's complete inability to defend themselves. If you look at true statistics, not pc friendly propaganda studies slanted to 'prove' their chowderheaded thinking, where ever strict gun control laws are on the books, there is a natural increase in crime of all kinds, especially gun crimes. 

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when here is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Thus sayeth Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, on the eve of Britain's entry into World War II. My how times have changed, eh? You Brits, buy this movie & rue the day you gave away your rights in exchange for the illusion of freedom & security. 

You Americans, buy this movie, then go exercise your Federally & Constitutionally protected right to keep & bear arms & buy a good hand gun or semi automatic rifle from a pawn shop & learn how to use it & teach your family how to also. You never know when hungry dead people or crazy alive ones might come looking for you to kill you & eat you or worse. Then you could shoot them in the head like a marksman & protect your loved
ones with something besides luck & camera magic to protect y'all.
 

(click here to buy the DVD)