By the dawn of the 21st Century, the zombie subgenre of horror was, for a lack of a better word, dead. Scream helped breathe new life into the slasher subgenre and it seemed Hollywood was also in love with remaking Japanese horror movies into The Ring and The Grudge.
But across the pond, something was brewing. In the film industry, you’re really only as good as your last movie. Danny Boyle had burst on to the scene in the mid-1990s with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However, he had hit a rough patch with A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach despite the star power of both movies. So, he and a relatively unknown writer, Alex Garland, and a young Irish actor, Cillian Murphy, made 28 Days Later. (Maybe you’ve heard of these two?) While it’s not really a zombie movie, but more of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror, it helped give the genre a boost.
In no time, the spring of 2004 had a remake of Dawn of the Dead written by Troma Entertainment alum James Gunn and directed by a music video director Zack Snyder. Maybe you’ve heard of those two? Yet, while Dawn opened in America in the spring, Shaun of the Dead opened in the United Kingdom before being released in North America later that year, probably to avoid confusion. And suddenly, zombie movies were popular again.
But what director Edgar Wright who co-wrote the script with lead actor Simon Pegg who plays the titular Shaun character realize is how unscary zombies have become. Even George A. Romero realized this in his original Dawn of the Dead and was able to use them more as a social commentary on consumerism. The funny thing is that Shaun is living such a mundane life in the Crouch End area of North London that he doesn’t even realize things are amiss on the morning of a full-blown zombie outbreak. He stumbles out of his flat half-awake to go to the nearby shop to get a soft drink and a snack but doesn’t realize there’s zombies and signs of violence all around him.
Wright says he had a similar experience like this as he had been up all night playing Resident Evil when he went to the nearby store that was open 24/7 to get something to eat. It was right at dawn and there wasn’t anyone out and he said it gave off a creepy apocalyptic vibe. Shaun doesn’t even realize he just slipped in blood at the shop and ignores a panhandler zombie as he goes back home. The fact that the zombies lumber around is something that the characters notice later in the movie to use to their advantage.
In 28 Days Later, the infected would run after their prey because it was a rage virus. But even in The Return of the Living Dead released in 1985, the zombies ran fast as they had slowly walked in the other movies. It takes Shaun and his roommate/friend Ed (Nick Frost) a long time to realize there is something going on. Ed is a ne’er do well who doesn’t work and sits on the couch playing video games or chatting with his friends on his phone. Shaun and Ed spend most of their nights at the Winchester pub.
Shaun’s life prior to the outbreak has gone bad. He works at a retail store where his co-workers are younger and don’t respect him. His stepfather, Phillip (Bill Nighy), is constantly on his case. And his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), breaks up with him after he blows their anniversary date. To top it off, his other flatmate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), who is more successful in his job and life, wants him to kick out Ed. In many ways, Shaun’s life is on life support as he lumbers around going through the motions.
Wright begins the movie showing regular people going about their days with the blankness and void of excitement. It’s for this reason that neither Shaun nor Ed, or other people seem to notice when strange things start happening around London in the days leading up to the full-blown outbreak. Even they notice zombies in the backyard, they don’t think much of it at first. But it’s when they have to battle to the zombies by throwing vinyl records at them, the movie takes on a silly tone that works. Wright does the right thing by limiting the violence and gore (There’s a lot of it. But there’s not too much.)
In what gives the movie more of a plot, Shaun discovers that Phillip has been bitten and he and Ed want to go save his mother, Barbara (Penelope Wilton). However, Shaun also wants to get Liz and go wait things out at the Winchester. All their scenarios hilariously include Shaun and Ed killing Phillip by whacking him on the head with a cricket bat and shovel. But Liz is in an apartment on an elevated floor with her friend, Dianne (Lucy Davis) and her boyfriend, David (Dylan Moran).
They all end up making it to the Winchester where they find themselves surrounded by zombies and getting aggravated with each other. One of the funniest moments has Shaun and his people bumping into his friend, Yvonne (Jessica Hynes), who has her own set of survivors who mirror Shaun’s. One of them is Yvonne’s boyfriend, Declan (Martin Freeman in a neat cameo). Freeman would go on to have bigger roles in Wright’s two other movies of his Three Flavours Cornetto (Hot Fuzz and The World’s End).
Eventually the movie does end with a deus ex machina which asks the question – Where’s all the law enforcement and military personnel to help? There’s even a snide comment about 28 Days Later overheard in a news report. And in the end, people learn to corral and control the current zombies and use them for manual labor or on reality TV game shows.
When the movie opened, it had been three years since 9/11 but there had also been a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom that same year where about 6,000 cattle and sheep were killed and burned. Wright said he had ignored the news on this until he turned the TV on confused as what is going on. I admit myself I was a couple days late myself when I found out about the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. On the day the tornadoes hit Moore, Okla. and surrounding areas in 2013 it was my step-grandson’s graduation ceremony in Tulsa and we didn’t find out until later that night.
I think the movie was helped by the incidents in the early 2000s. This is why so many zombie movies popped up because people had seen the mass hysteria over anthrax reports in mail. But what makes it relatable is there’s nothing extraordinary about Shaun and Ed. They’re just regular people and even when put in an outbreak situation, they react the way you thought they would. This isn’t a video game which is what some zombie movies later became. (To tell the truth, I never cared for Zombieland.)
Made for only $6 million, it made nearly $40 million. While that’s not much, it still was an impressive box office take and many critics gave it rave reviews. It kicked off a resurgence in the zombie subgenre with the Zombieland movies, The Walking Dead series and spinoff and even the movie Fido took the premise of controlling zombies and turned it into a movie.
Now, zombie movies lost much of their luster do to oversaturation. But this one is still fresh after 20 years.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 