Shaun of the Dead

Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: 9/22/2009
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton
Year: 2004
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The Movie:

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead follows a slacker type named Shaun (played by Pegg) who lives with his two roommates, Ed (Nick Frost) and Pete (Peter Serafinowicz) in the flat they share together. When Shaun gets dumped by his pretty girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) for not having anything even remotely resembling ambition, he's understandably upset. So upset, in fact, that he doesn't notice the shambling flesh eating zombies popping up in his neighborhood. When he and Ed find a zombie in their back yard, they think she's drunk and it isn't until she attacks them that they start to wonder if maybe something is amiss. As it turns out, London is being overrun by the undead at a pretty rapid pace, though Shaun and Ed figure out quickly that a swift blow to the head will take care of the problem.

Figuring that he's got to save the two women he cares about most - his mum and Liz - Shaun decides he and Ed will steal Pete's car, pick them up, head to the local pub which they ascertain will be the safest place for all of them, and wait for this all to blow over. Of course, things never go as planned in the movies and before you know it, Shaun's stepfather is turning into a zombie, the hordes of the undead are far larger and a bit trickier to deal with than anticipated, and Liz and her roommates realize that Shaun's plan maybe wasn't such a great one to begin with.

Unlike dreck like the Scary Movie series or Return of the Spartans, Shaun of the Dead is able to effectively send up a genre without talking down to its audience. You very definitely get the feeling that Pegg and Wright are fans, it shows in the attention to detail and in the fact that there are parts of the film where it very definitely does function more as a horror film than as a comedy. Once our heroes wind up in the pub and the zombies start encroaching on them, the pictures takes on a considerably darker tone. This helps the film in a big way, as had it simply remained a series of slacker style quips and periodic fart jokes it probably would have gotten pretty tired pretty fast.

The film also gives us characters that we can relate to. We all know someone like Ed, a loveable loser we hung out with in high school who seems perpetually stuck in those days and Nick Frost plays that character perfectly. Pegg, seemingly playing an extension of his character from Spaced (in fact there are a couple of nods to that series in the film), is his typically screwy self but there are definitely times where you really feel for the guy and want him to win the girl and save the day. The rest of the cast all give strong efforts as well, Shaun's mother and step-father providing some welcome laughs when they're pulled into the storyline.

All in all, the movie just works. You don't have to be a diehard zombie movie buff to get all the jokes and despite a fair bit of gore and some appropriately foul language, this is basically just a romantic comedy at heart - one that doesn't suck, mind you, rather, one that bites (zing!).

Video/Audio/Extras:

Shaun of the Dead doesn't look quite as good as Hot Fuzz but it's close. The 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, presented here in a VC-1 encoded 1080p high definition transfer has nice, lifelike colors and strong detail levels. Skin tones look pretty good and black levels are strong throughout. There's way more texture to the image here than there ever was on standard definition and the color reproduction is considerably more impressive as well. Fans of the film should be very pleased with Universal's efforts here, as this is a well authored representation of what had to be some very clean source material.

An excellent English 48kHz 1.5 Mbps DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix adorns this Blu-ray release, as do DTS 5.1 Surround Sound mixes in French and Spanish. English closed captioning is available as are optional French and Spanish subtitles. The DTS-HD track on this disc is very good. There's plenty of aggressive channel separation and during the later part of the film where the action picks up, while quieter moments use the rears to add ambience in the form of natural room sounds and background noise and by spreading the score out nicely. Dialogue is clean, clear and concise even during the commotion of the zombie attack scenes and the musical score and sound effects never overshadow what's being said on screen. Bass response is solid and the sound mix is strong through.

Universal has loaded this disc up with four commentaries - one from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the second from Pegg, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield, and Lucy Davis, the third from Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton and last but not least, the fourth from 'the zombies' (yep, the bit part extras and background characters get their own commentary). A lot of it is overkill but each track has its own merits. The sense of humor that makes the feature so much fun runs rampant here but it's all in context and often times not only informative but genuinely fascinating. Pegg and Wright have the best track, or at least the most traditional, but the actors have the funniest one. Wilton and Nighy aren't quite as strong but are still of interest while, surprisingly enough, the extras hold their own and give us some welcome insight into what it's like playing a zombie in a movie like this.

From there we move on to a series of fun little featurettes in a section entitled Raw Meat, starting with a pair of video diaries from Simon Pegg, Lucy Davis, and Joe Cornish. Ranging between 5-10 minutes long these are moderately amusing and they give us a look at what it was like on set during the making of the film. Also in here are some Casting Tapes, Edgar & Simon's Flip Chart, a quick before and after SFX Comparison, some Make-up Tests and a very generic EPK Featurette that serves as your standard talking head piece.

The TV Bits section includes bits seen on the TV in the background of the film including segments like T4 With Coldplay, Fun Dead, Trisha -- Your Nine Lives Are Up, Trisha -- I Married a Monster, and Remembering Z Day. It's cool to see these here out of context, some of them are quite funny. Accompanying this section is the Missing Bits department which is a bunch of excised material starting with Extended Bits which is basically fifteen scenes of extended footage with or without your choice of optional filmmaker commentary. The Man Who Would Be Shaun (480p, 0:35) is a quick on set encounter with Pegg and Frost while Funky Pete is an alternate take of one of the film's more curse-heavy scenes. Plot Holes fills in various, well, plot holes with some interesting narration over some pictures. There's also a collection of outages here. Through Universal's U-Control function you can access a collection of storyboards that play out in scene specific fashion and show us how that process helped bring the film to life, or a Zomb-O-Meter which is basically a trivia track (albeit a very fun one).

Rounding out the extras are a zombie gallery, a collection of trailers, a storyboard gallery, animated menus and chapter selection. The disc is also D-Box enabled and Blu-ray Live 2.0 compatible.

The Final Word:

A clever, funny and surprisingly tense zombie comedy, Shaun Of The Dead manages to hit all the right notes, sending up the genre with respect, never having to stoop to the lowest common denominator but rather playing off of it's more obviously silly aspects with tongue in cheek and heart on sleeve. Universal's Blu-ray release is a strong one with a nice array of extras and very pleasing A/V quality.