The meta column, or whatever the kids are calling it these days, that I wrote last week garnered me more compliments than I have ever received on a film review. Keeping that in mind, this week’s column will be a film review. And it will not follow any of the precepts I enumerated last week.
Axiom: One cannot just roll out of bed in the morning, even if your mother is still asleep in it, and think one can make a zombie film. Anecdotal evidence: I had a friend in grade school named Matt Sullivan. He was infamous for his (disputed) prepubescent likeness to Tom Cruise and a resulting fondness for reflective surfaces. We shared a passion for gratuitous violence and misanthropy, so we figured making a zombie film would provide a release valve for our pre-teen angst. The plot from the popular video game “Resident Evil” provided a jumping off point (this later became a major motion picture…coincidence?!). We shot our show-stopping first scene: me wearing a latex zombie mask and soft shoeing my way through the refrain from “Give my Regards to Broadway.” Matt, as Guy Violentz, steps in, cocks a shotgun and effortlessly delivers the bon mot “Give my regards to the devil because you’ll be there ere long,” before bloodlessly blowing me away. Then the whole thing bored us and we played “NFL Blitz.”
The lesson is probably this: When making a zombie film one must be aware that that endeavor is contextualized by an illustrious history. Why do zombies keep us coming back for more? In its own blissfully campy, egregiously pleasurably, violent way, zombie films mean something. In the 60s, zombies represented the counter-culture, and in the 80s and early 90s, yuppies. Lately, the genre has forgotten itself. Sleek and scary, “Resident Evil,” the “Dawn of the Dead” remake and “28 Days Later” (which even refuses to call itself a zombie film), have misplaced the mirth I heart so dearly. What happened to the slow, bad-postured, lovably lumbering oafs? Give a zombie coffee and a back brace and you got nothing.
Thus, adhering to my professed allegiance to punny wordplay and zombies, I viewed the British film “Shaun of the Dead.” It fancies itself “A romantic comedy. With zombies.” But it is really a satiric take on zombie-dom. This is a tack already taken by Peter Jackson with “Dead Alive” and nailed perfectly because it was played maniacally straight to capitalize on the intrinsic comic elements of the genre. “Shaun” takes a big risk setting out to mock the zombie film: “Wait, what zombies are inane?!”
“Shaun” opens with an utterly humdrum setup: man (Shaun) with slob flat mate who loves batty mother is dumped by girlfriend. It tries for a “The Office” feel, which is certainly a noble undertaking, but the timing, delivery and content are notably inferior. Then the “zed is for zombies” arrive on the scene, and much of the humor is from then on derived from Shaun and co. being a) blissfully unaware of the zombies, b) fairly non-plussed and somewhat indifferent at times and c) all the time more focused on the banality of their own lives. This has considerable comic mileage.
Geeks will splooge on “Shaun’s” usage of the zombie genre’s iconography, reflexive references abound (signature lines from “Evil Dead” trilogy, Bub from “Day of the Dead” has a nominal pizza place, etc.), and pop culture in general (“Batman” soundtrack as weapon, “Star Wars” stuff). “Shaun” pounds its self-awareness into our brains (Mmmm brains), and is at times showboat-y, but the gleeful manner in which it is done leads the viewer to bear no ill will. All in all, this is an immensely satisfying entry into the zombie oeuvre. It is hilarious, audacious, respects the genre and is wittily gory as all get out (the purposefully lame deus ex machina and inspired resolution are highlights).
Critical Ass Endorsed paraphrases:
Non film-major proletariat comrade Emily Morris ’08: “It was funny. The gore was icky, but it was funny. Like a romantic comedy. Only with zombies.”
Film major Daniel Janvey ’06: “The first five-sixteenths of ‘Shaun’…played well off romantic comedy archetypes, using film form effectively to establish a world where it is positively absurd to have zombies feasting on British entrails, before devolving into masturbatory self-congratulation at what it has accomplished. Still, it’s funny.”
Zombie friend thought: (unintelligible groans) “Shaun of Dead” misrepresents zombie socio-cultural aims. But funny. Unnnh.
Rating: 3 zombie relay races out of a possible 4. Worth your funny money.
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