Shaun of the Dead

“I don’t think I’ve got it in me to shoot my mum, my flat mate and my girlfriend all in the same day,” says weary North London pub-dweller Shaun after a strenuous 24 hours of running from and battling flesh-eating zombies. Fortunately, he does not need to. Well, at least not all of them. So it goes in this clever, drop-dead hilarious butchering and properly British reconstruction of George Romero’s daunting, disgusting and droll Dawn of the Dead. With loutish sidekick Ed (Nick Frost) at his side, Shaun (Simon Pegg) races to save his sweetheart Liz and dear mum from being eaten alive by an escalating army of London’s undead. The film is profanity-laced and gory (stringy innards are yanked from one screaming victim) and takes a darkly dramatic turn that feels out of place in this rowdy mess but survives as the most outrageous, deadpan and entertaining horror movie set in the British Isles since An American Werewolf in London. Directed and co-written by Edgar Wright. M.H.