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Rating: “It’s a 10 on the fun scale. This film will become a cult.”
Stephen King
“It's not just the best film of this year, but of every year from now on.”
Quentin Tarantino
“A new lease on life for the “zombie” genre. The most entertaining film of the year.”
Peter Jackson (director of The Lord of the Rings)
“This film is a real blast, I loved it.”
George A. Romero
With such credits printed on the back cover, you can also understand why I couldn't resist buying this DVD “Shaun of the Dead” (in Italian L'Alba dei Morti Dementi) by the young Edgar Wright at a stand for just 3 miserable euros. And no purchase has ever been more worth it!
A film that encompasses several genres (precisely Comedy, Horror, Drama, and Nonsense) all with a truly spirited and modern directorial style, with hilarious screenplay solutions and camera movements that give the final montage a fresh and lively feel.
It’s the story of Shaun (Simon Pegg, a sort of red-haired Fabio Volo) who, at the height of a major personal crisis (his girlfriend wants to leave him, he feels old at work, his stepfather hates him, his slacker friend wants to evict him...), finds himself in the middle of a strange epidemic that overwhelms all of London. Thanks to a zombie invasion taking over the city, the protagonist thus becomes aware of his own limitations, while also discovering other qualities never recognized before. Together with his loyal good-for-nothing friend Ed (a fabulous Nick Frost in a state of grace!), he reluctantly abandons his boring and repetitive life as a LIVING DEAD consisting of pubs, drunken nights, and evenings all the same, spent vomiting or in front of the dull TV, to face, armed with a baseball bat and a shovel, the far more formidable threat of the WALKING DEAD now invading the city.
A film bursting with vitality, full of fast-paced dialogues, hilarious jokes, and moments of grand comedy all amidst splattered heads, cannibal children, and zombie-stepfathers in a tightly paced and well-rhythmed montage that gives this film a refreshing lightness, leaving us satisfied and entertained for over two hours. In short: a true little gem of its genre.
The presence of the undead is everywhere, and the threat is ubiquitous, yet there’s no sense of real fear, even due to the absolute calmness of our fearless little group in facing situations at the very least “heavy” with the typical British sense of humor. Memorable are the scenes where our hero proposes the usual PUB as the only safe haven to spend the days of the epidemic, between a beer and peanuts, waiting for the army to come to their rescue. Or the official introductions of the mother-in-law and girlfriend in the getaway car amongst wobbling zombies in the streets, or the protagonist’s indifferent and distracted notice of the strange creatures (in this scene almost emulating Mr. Bean). Not to mention the sequence where the protagonists massacre a zombie to the tune of “Don't stop me now” by Queen, keeping time with the beating, or when they pretend to be zombies to avoid detection, mimicking imbeciles (we are really on the edge of good taste here!). Not forgetting the very amusing scene where, to attack two zombies found in the garden, they decide to throw the old LPs from the historical collection, selecting them based on the band and the rarity of the edition: sidesplitting laughter!
In short, ALMOST a masterpiece (combining humor and fear is indeed a very difficult exercise) and still two hours of healthy entertainment, fear, and laughter which, I’d say, are certainly not things to overlook considering the life as living dead we often find ourselves leading between a monotonous workday and an evening in front of the TV repeating the same hyper-reheated, tasteless soups.
Is it possible that now it turns out zombies are more alive than we are?!
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