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Shaun (Simon Pegg) is not quite your average twentysomething. Lacking any real ambition and drifting along in a job that he hates, he drives his long-suffering girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), up the wall. Despite being a very decent chap, Shaun suddenly gets a very rude wake up call when the undead begin roaming the earth (or London's Crouch End, at least) and, with the help of his slacker chum, Ed (Nick Frost), he must save Liz and his dear mum from becoming zombies! Well, that's if he can get out of the local pub... |
On the day north London slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) decides to get his aimless life together, the capital becomes Zombie Central as the dead rise to eat the living. If you like Pegg and director Edgar Wright's cult Channel 4 series Spaced, you'll enjoy their Night of the Living Deadpan blend of student union humour and hardcore horror, which ransacks George A Romero's entire Dead trilogy and virtually every Italian zombie flick for inspiration. The movie's one joke gets old pretty fast but the sleazy retro video-nasty feel Wright aims for is absolutely spot on. Shaun's mates are all played by familiar TV faces — Spaced's Nick Frost, The Office's Lucy Davis, Black Books' Dylan Moran. But none are in the same class as his mum, the magnificent Penelope Wilton, and stepdad, Bill Nighy, who move the splatter farce into more resonant areas than a run-of-the-mill pub gag.
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Halliwell's Film Guide
Amiable send-up of the zombie genre, with some good jokes.