Shaun Of The Dead
| State of body | Battered about the head and shoulders, but not quite dead. |
|---|---|
| Detail of inspection | Inspected once. |
| Forensic Investigator | shellshear |
| Comments | Subject lucky to have survived – had been declared dead, but lurched off the autopsy table before autopsy started. Currently playing video games in visitor’s area. |
I like zombie films. Actually, I think itÃs more true to say that I’m a sucker for satire, and many zombie films, even serious ones, are by nature satires of various aspects of modern society. The satire in these films is usually not subtle, but it is terribly accurate and particularly aimed at the kind of things that affect my life, just as Dilbert, while verging on being dull and generic at times, is nonetheless required reading every day.
And Shaun of the Dead has got the zombie satire going in spades. I was surprised to see that itÃs actually a reasonably faithful zombie movie. It doesn’t really take the piss out of the genre, but rather draws its humour from the very English reactions to all the zombies lurching around the place. In particular, the most effective moments are early on, in which the self-absorbed characters completely fail to follow the slightest bit of news, all of which is going on in the background, and which culminates beautifully in the scene in which Shaun goes to the grocery store for his usual supplies, while zombies lurch around him.
The film then devolves into the usual format of having a small group of survivors desperately fighting for their lives, and is therefore more about the characters and their reactions to the disaster, than about the zombies themselves.
And this is going to be a relatively short forensic analysis, because I donÃt think they did all that much that I would have done differently (with all the usual caveats that I doubt I’d have written anything remotely as funny, etc.) There are some times in which the zombies seem to move very, very slowly, or stop doing things just because the main characters are having some big speeches. I’d have tried a little harder to keep things moving here by having the zombies continuing to do their thing, and the characters reacting, but still continuing with their big speeches. There are two big moments in particular – one, when the characters are outside the pub and Shaun in chewing out his lazy flatmate for talking on the mobile phone. The joke is that they are attracting far too much attention, but it is too sustained. Even by the start of ShaunÃs big shouting speech, the zombies have started to pay attention, so itÃs no real surprise that they’re paying attention at the end.
I’d have had the zombies much less aware of their presence until Shaun starts yelling – perhaps even to have the speech out of the corner of his mouth as they’re pushing their way through the crowd pretending to be zombies (a touch that I really, really, liked) rather than when they’re already at the door of the pub. I would have enjoyed seeing the flatmate talking on the phone while pretending to be a zombie at the same time. The second big stop-everything moment is when the zombies are attacking and Shaun is trying to stop the twat from shooting his mother in the head. The zombies seem to give up and stand outside waving their hands for about five minutes while the argument goes on. It might have been better if the characters had been forced to move, say, with Shaun dragging his mother along, as the zombies continue to attack – or, if they had put that moment in a lull in the action rather than in the middle of the action. It suspends the heightened “theyÃre breaking in” moment for too long.
In zombie movie cliches, of course somebody stands too close to the door or window and has hands grab him/her and pull them into the clutches of the ravenous hordes. Unfortunately, the death of the twat is a very straightforward version of this (though it does have a bit of an homage to Day of the Dead). The characters make good play, earlier on, about Shaun and his lazy housemate’s habit of leaving the front door open – they might have tried a similar thing with the twat habitually standing or sitting where heÃs in imminent danger, say, or leaning against things and breaking them (thus, he could have broken the window himself) or just being incredibly stupid about some things. Instead, although heÃs a twat, the fact that he stands so close to the window was a bit too clearly the moment at which they said “Right! Got to get rid of the twat now. Let’s see…”.
And we never really see what happened to the actress character – she is enveloped by the zombie crowd, and of course they don’t want to show icky stuff happening to her, but it is almost as though they forgot about her. It would have been nice if, at the end when Shaun and his girlfriend come out of the cellar, she was there in the zombie crowd still pretending to be a zombie (and thus Shaun and girlfriend, rather than being rescued by the army, could join her and lurch into the sunset). We could certainly buy it as a trick, even repeatedly, because they’ve only used it once before and we are happy to believe that the zombies aren’t particularly quick learners.
In fact, they could have made a bit more play out of that bit. Due to the characters’ incompetence, the zombies could keep getting into wherever they try to fortify themselves, but with their “pretending to be zombies” trick, they keep getting out again. Alternately, this trick could be used to explain Shaun getting away (perhaps in a flashback to avoid spoiling the suspense), when he draws the zombies away from the pub – he runs for a bit, goes around a corner, changes clothing (eg. by taking off his jacket) and pretends to be a zombie again. Gradually, however, the zombies begin to catch on, meaning that the characters have to stop being incompetent, which is of course incredibly difficult for them.
I really liked that they played around with the idea of a zombie movie without breaking out of the genre, but I do think they could have done more. The film isnÃt exactly a missed opportunity – despite the rather unconvincing escape at the end, it is very funny and works well. I read a bit of film theory somewhere that stated a film needs only three memorable “good bits” to be remembered fondly, and Shaun of the Dead definitely has at least three: the trip to the deli after the zombies have risen (especially when he slips on something in the floor in the deli), the record throwing, and the pretending-to-be-zombies bit. However, it falls short of being a classic. It just needs a bit more thought and cleverness. It had opportunities, it stepped up and beat them savagely about the head and shoulders, but it didnÃt quite finish the job.