150 Words About . . .SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)
By James Newman
No way you haven’t seen this, right? Sigh. There’s one in every crowd . . .
Speaking of slackers, Shaun’s a thirtysomething pothead who trudges through life with zero aspirations beyond playing videogames, which makes him lose his girl and fail to notice the apocalypse happening around him, all in one godawful day.
This “romantic comedy with zombies”features a deviously clever script co-written by director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver) and star Simon Pegg. My favorite thing about it is the recurring bits of dialogue that have a different meaning the second time we hear them (“You’ve got red on you” a co-worker tells Shaun early on, but after the chaos starts it’s not because of a leaking pen in his pocket! And when a friend asks how he’s doing once the dead have risen to lunch on the living, Shaun’s reply is no longer a figure of speech: “Surviving”).
