With Halloween right around the corner, many of us may watch some of our favorite horror movies, and while it’s certainly far from scary, “Shaun of the Dead” makes a great movie to watch with friends this time of year.
As a quick summary of the movie, it primarily follows the journey of Shaun (Simon Pegg), his best friend Ed (Nick Frost), and his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) as they navigate a zombie apocalypse. At the start of the movie, Shaun is portrayed as a loser going nowhere and ends up getting dumped by Liz.
As the movie progresses, Shaun slowly becomes more and more of a good leader, eventually leading his friends and his mother to the pub that he and Ed frequent, much to the dismay of Liz and her friends David and Dianne.
Along the way, plenty of jokes happen, such as the joke of Shaun going through his daily routine but being completely oblivious of the fact that most of the people he interacts with have been zombified.
Overall, the movie is a fantastic take on the zombie genre, as it is a parody but still functions as a decent film in the genre that it parodies. Director Edgar Wright uses his now trademark quick cuts and match cuts to give the movie a fast feel but still keeps the plot in a place where it’s easy to follow, and the movie can surprisingly tug on the heartstrings, such as when Shaun is forced to shoot his own mother after she turns, or when Shaun finally makes peace with his stepfather as he dies.
On top of that, the movie can honestly surprise you with some incredibly tense moments, like when Shaun goes to turn on the power to the pub, and it’s revealed that the zombies he led away to get into the pub, had followed him back, compromising the safety that they thought they had.
On Metacritic, the film has a 76 in critic reviews and an 87 in user scores. Keith Phipps of The AV Club, gave the film an 80 in his Metacritic review stating, “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.”
It’s easy to say that the movie was a hit when, according to the movie’s IMDB page, the movie made more than $3,000,000 on its opening weekend in the US and Canada.
“It’s one of my favorite zombie movies, it may be a comedy but it really does double as a genuinely good zombie movie,” moviegoer Jesse Munday said.
While it probably won’t have you hiding under the covers, “Shaun of the Dead” makes a great movie to watch at the start of the Halloween season as a means of easing into more scary movies. For every genuinely tense or heartfelt moment, there are a dozen laughs, which also makes it a phenomenal movie to watch with your friends this Halloween season.
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