Shaun of the Dead Review: Classic Zombie Comedy

Edgar Wright’s first big claim to fame, Shaun of the Dead, brings the laughs and surprising heart for a classic zombie comedy.

But in enters a zombie apocalypse, forcing these three and the rest of their friends to flee and fight for survival. Or, at least, wait for all this to blow over.

At a glance, Shaun of the Dead may look like it operates in the same manner as some classic spoof movies like Young Frankenstein or Airplane, totally riffing on a specific film or genre. And make no mistake, there’s plenty of satire going on here, both right in your face and sneakily in the background. The funniest gag for me is how long it takes anyone to even realize a zombie outbreak is happening in the first place, simply because Shaun’s life – along with the city as a whole – is just that figuratively undead and mundane. The movie even borders on mean-spiritedness in scenes like Shaun almost wanting his step-dad to be infected so he has an excuse to kill him. The way everyone reacts to each crisis that comes their way is comically ridiculous but, in a strange way, still somehow relatable.

I wouldn’t call Shaun of the Dead consistently laugh-out-loud funny, but when the varied jokes land big, they really land big. There are funny exchanges, fast-paced editing gags, playful bits of worldbuilding, and even a sequence with a Queen song that’s basically Wright’s test run for what he’d achieve in Baby Driver years later. Even the jokes that don’t get full-on laughs are elevated by the razor-sharp wit and timing from the entire cast. No one outside of Shaun, Ed, and Shaun’s mother (Penelope Wilton) is very memorable, but their repertoire and clashes of personal interest keep the energy going the whole way through. No one here is equipped or prepared to handle something like this, and no one has the exact same ideas of what the right thing to do is.

In that way, Shaun of the Dead surprisingly has a lot in common with a more straightforward zombie flick, which shows further in how well it nails the suspense and emotion. When all the jokes are put aside and we have to focus on the difficult epiphanies and sacrifices that are, again, commonplace in zombie stories, this movie really lets you feel their impact. I’ll admit that a few sequences are genuinely difficult to get through, either because they’re that grisly or because the characters are in such clear, genuine pain … or because I simply couldn’t watch Shaun and Ed use a Dire Straits record as a weapon. You treat their music as the treasure it is, you heathens!

So much of the film’s humor and heart rests on Pegg, who shines in delivering them both. The stresses his character faces at the start of the movie compound with the much graver outbreak, and you see his composure and tolerance for all the B.S. thrown at him slowly but surely collapse. Shaun himself may be 29 years old, but that doesn’t stop this from being a coming-of-age story … kind of. 

You know early on that Shaun, who’s presented as lazy and unreliable, is going to step up and prove his worth to everyone else and himself. But what’s funny is that he never becomes some grand hero or even gets the full respect of the people he’s with. It’s more of an inward growth. If anything, Shaun of the Dead seems to relish the idea of a lazy, unremarkable life, just as long as you have the ability to go further when you need to. And even then, the end goal remains the same: just getting by with what you have. Like a zombie, but a happy zombie … if such a thing exists.

It’s very rare that I can call satirical comedies as effective as the films they’re parodying, but Shaun of the Dead is one of the exceptions. It simultaneously works as a playful, thorough riff on an endless amount of zombie pictures and a legitimately engaging thriller on its own terms. I loved it the first time I saw it, and holds up extremely well all these years later as one of my favorite comedies. If you’re looking to revisit it this Halloween or even check it out for the first time, you’re in for a sweet, well-rounded set of flavors in your cinematic candy bucket.

Shaun of the Dead is now available to watch on digital and on demand.