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Critics Consensus: Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit.
Critic Consensus: Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit.
All Critics (205) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (188) | Rotten (17) | DVD (25)
Mixing horror and humor is no mean feat, but Shaun Of The Dead tightens throats in fear without making the laughs stick there in the process.
The pasty, scruffy Pegg shows a surprising amount of range for the unlikely hero of a zombie flick.
The movie bogs down and the humor seems to dry up, though the blood continues to well, spurt and spew.
The cast make a cosy fit, the patter is still sitcom snappy, but Wright also has the visual snap to carry this saga of backyard apocalypse.
The zombie-movie genre already has some wink-wink funny entries, but this U.K. smash hit, written by Pegg and Wright, takes the prize. It's a bloody hoot.
For those who don't mind a little laughter with their zombies (or perhaps it should be the other way around), this is an unusual source of entertainment.
Wright's style is pure, cartoon aesthetic: all quick cuts, sharp points of focus, the precise merging of sound with a cut or pan and the crowd-pleasing use of pop tunes.
Shaun of the Dead is a cute, successful zombie spoof built on a central joke: if the undead actually came to London, supposedly turned-on town of nattering youth, no one would really notice.
It's nice to see a film where the writing is so immediately brilliant that a certain part of you relaxes.
It may only be April, but what we have here is pretty likely to be the British comedy of the year, its knockout final punchline planting a silly grin on your face that takes some while to fade.
Despite the emphasis on humour, Shaun shows its zombie movie credentials with some impressively gory special effects makeup and a willingness to despatch cast members in an exceptionally gruesome fashion.
Some scenes are too talky, too much like a sitcom, but whenever that threatens to sink the film, the zombies appear and save the day (if you see what I mean).
A very British, humorous take on the good old zombie topic. Not only is this full of great ideas, jokes, movie quotes and great laughs, it even works pretty well as gory splatter horror, even though you gotta laugh way too often to be really scared. Silly, but really lovable and just fun to watch, as long as some blood doesn't bother you.
Super Reviewer
Pegg and Frost are so funny together in this atypical zombie movie that nicely blends British humor and a lot of gore while making a smart social commentary, and it benefits from an incredibly witty dialogue and some hilarious moments to make you laugh hard.
Ambition-free retail manager Shaun thinks that being dumped by his girlfriend is the end of the world, until next morning when he wakes up to find that the dead are walking the earth. Brought to you by the same team who brought you Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead is a knowing homage to George Romero's Dead trilogy in which a zombie holocaust is seen through the eyes of a London slacker. Much beloved by many, this film is a bit of a case of rose-tinted memories; the highlights are actually hilarious, but there are rather less of them than you'd think. In fact most of the really funny lines happen in the first half hour, before the bulk of the zombie action when the Pegg and Frost double act are in full effect. The idea does run out of steam somewhat for the final half hour but when it's funny, it's very funny and it's actually rather better made than a lot of horror films that are meant to be taken seriously. Definitely worth seeing for the best bits, but perhaps not the masterpiece it's made out to be.
Edgar Wright's comedic zombie-fest provides a great blend of frights and laughs and a hint of drama in between. Simon Pegg's performance was nearly flawless along with Wright's swift direction, making Shaun of the Dead a bloody brilliant film. 4.5/5
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