By JAMES RAMPTON
The dead walk the earth once more. After Danny Boyle's "undead" film 28 Days Later, and the cinema version of the video game Resident Evil, a remake of Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero's schlock-horror classic, has munched its way to the top of the United States box-office charts.
The zombie is back - and this time it's profitable. Relishable though they are, none of those undead-fests is quite like Shaun of the Dead, surely the world's first "zom-rom-com". Like John Landis' An American Werewolf in London, its most obvious predecessor, it manages to pull off one of the hardest genres in cinema - the comedy-horror movie.
It seamlessly melds gags with gore: one minute, you're screaming with laughter; the next, you're screaming with fear.
In one memorable sequence, the action switches from Shaun going on a zombie-killing spree with a cricket bat to him sitting calmly on the sofa, eating a Cornetto and watching the TV, while still drenched in blood.
Its star, Simon Pegg, and director, Edgar Wright, of the cult Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, have collaborated here on a coming-of-age picture that just happens to involve legions of the undead and buckets of blood and gore.
In Shaun of the Dead, Pegg plays the eponymous central character, a terminally unambitious, thirtysomething wastrel who is blithely watching his life spiral down the plughole. He fritters away his days in a dead-end job at a local electronics store and his nights with his saddo flatmate (played by Nick Frost, Pegg's real-life former flatmate) at their local, the Winchester Arms.
Shaun's girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), is increasingly exasperated by his slacker lifestyle, in which an exciting night consists of getting to level 13 on the latest horror video game.
He is quite content to meander along like a zombie - until an attack by real zombies on his cosy corner of north London jolts him into taking his responsibilities more seriously. He finds unexpectedly heroic qualities inside himself as he urges his friends to take up the cudgels and fight back against this invasion of the undead.
Rallying the troops, Shaun gets all philosophical: "As Bertrand Russell said, 'The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation'."
"Was that on a beer mat?" Liz inquires.
"Yeah ... a Guinness Cold," replies Shaun.
Co-starring a host of top comic actors (Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy, Dylan Moran, Lucy Davis and Pegg's partner in Spaced, Jessica Stevenson), the film features homages to horror classics from Dawn of the Dead to Assault on Precinct 13 and the video for Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Why does Pegg think zombies have so emphatically returned from beyond the grave? "The zombie comeback - excuse the pun - is down to synchronicity and the cyclical nature of the genre. Sounds like a thesis, doesn't it?" grins Pegg. "Just before zombies, werewolves were popular, and every now and then, Dracula makes a big comeback."
Of course, what distinguishes Pegg's picture is its comic edge. Never has an evisceration by a gang of frenzied undead been so amusing.
"There is a danger of falling between two stools, but I like the idea of the shifting emotional dynamic," he explains.
"Even when everything is going to hell, there is still room for jokes. It's also great to be scared in a safe environment. You know you can't be harmed, but you're still getting the buzz from the fight-or-flight adrenalin response. You're getting high on your own chemicals.
"With this film, we are trying to create a new subgenre. I think you can take traditionally trashy formats and turn them into something else. We want to do for horror what [Ang Lee's] Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did for kung-fu movies."
The movie also has a point to make about the inevitability of growing up. "Shaun of the Dead is about having to take responsibility in your early 30s. It's about realising you can't be young and frivolous forever. The zombies are a metaphor for the inexorable tide of responsibilities that engulfs you as you grow older.
"You can't keep ignoring the issues of buying a house or having children. These things need to be addressed - even if it is with a cricket bat ...
"The skeletal idea of the film - sorry, another pun - is that this guy gets his life sorted through a crisis. Anything could have motivated him to get on with his life - a traffic jam, a hailstorm, a fire. It just so happens that it's a zombie invasion."
Pegg beams. "There's something beautiful about zombies. They're a multi-purpose, walking metaphor. They can stand for consumerism, class, or viral paranoia. In our film, they also stand for boredom and apathy. They're a distillation of us - all they want to do is eat and replicate.
"I also love the general crapness of zombies - they're slow and clumsy. You could be in this room with one, and all you'd have to do would be to hide behind the sofa."
On screen
* What: Shaun of the Dead
* Where and when: The Civic, tonight, 8.45pm, and tomorrow, 4pm
- INDEPENDENT
Fun in a grave new world
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