Shaun of the Dead, 2004.
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, and Penelope Wilton.
SYNOPSIS:
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s classic Shaun of the Dead gets the 20th anniversary treatment with a nice Steelbook that mimics the covers of those EC Comics horror comic books from the 1950s. You also get a code for a digital copy, a new bonus feature, and a big pile of extras ported over from the last 4K Ultra HD edition.
I’ve never been a big zombie movie guy, but I can appreciate certain zombie projects for the bigger picture they envision. For example, I watched The Walking Dead for a while because I was intrigued by the idea of following a group of people as they deal with the aftermath of the end of society as we know it. (I got tired of the show because it became repetitive.)
And, likewise, I can appreciate Shaun of the Dead because of the humorous way it approaches the subject matter. In this case, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star as Shaun and Ed, respectively, a couple ne’er-do-well twenty-somethings living in London who enjoy playing video games, smoking pot, and listening to loud music, much to the consternation of their third roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), who has a good white collar job.
As the story opens, Pete has gotten sick of Ed’s freeloading ways (at least Shaun has a job, even if it’s one in an electronics shop) and Shaun’s girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), has dumped him because he botched plans for their anniversary dinner, which is part of a recurring pattern.
Meanwhile, a zombie apocalypse begins to break out in London, but Ed and Shaun are oblivious to it; when Shaun heads to the corner store, for example, he thinks nothing of a broken car windshield and trash scattered around the street.
Later, a zombie shows up in their backyard, which they assume is a drunk person until she falls on an umbrella stand and gets up despite the gaping hole in her midsection. They discover that Pete has become a zombie too, and soon the pair are scrambling to figure out how to reach Shaun’s mother and stepfather and his now-ex-girlfriend and her roommates and keep everyone safe “until this whole thing blows over.”
Acts two and three play out like a typical zombie movie crossed with a rom-com parody, as Shaun must deal with his dislike of his stepfather and his complicated situation with Liz while trying to find a safe haven from the zombie horde. Along the way, he’ll learn some things and so forth, but the real fun here is watching him and Ed concoct various plans that inevitable go awry. (And watch for a very brief appearance by Martin Freeman, before he played Bilbo Baggins.)
Shaun of the Dead has been issued on 4K Ultra HD before, this this new edition honors the movie’s 20th anniversary, complete with a Steelbook package that pays homage to the classic EC Comics horror comics of the 1950s.
You also get a code for a digital copy as well as a new bonus feature, the 24-minute Shaun of the Dead: 20 Bloody Years!, in which director Edgar Wright gets together with his co-screenwriter and star Simon Pegg, as well as star Nick Frost, to reflect on the movie.
The rest of the extras have been ported over from the previous edition. They’re quite comprehensive and are housed on the accompanying Blu-ray, except the commentary tracks. Here’s what you’ll find:
• Audio Commentaries: Pegg and Wright do their own track, while Pegg is joined by co-stars Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield, and Lucy Davis for another one and actors Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton take care of a third one. The best of the three is the Pegg/Wright commentary, since they’re both very funny and they have a lot to say, given the fact that they wrote the movie together. The large group one rambles a bit and the Nighy/Wilton one is plagued by a good amount of dead air.
• Missing Bits: This comprises a little over 13 minutes worth of deleted footage, with optional commentary for all of it. You also get nearly 11 minutes of outtakes.
• Raw Meat: This is a batch of featurettes that total nearly 60 minutes and serve up a nice look a the making of the movie, including video diaries from three cast members (well, one just plays a zombie), audition footage, and other stuff.
• TV Tidbits: You get about 11 minutes worth of the full versions of the TV broadcasts shown in the background at various points in the movie. In particular, the TV news parts are how Shaun and Ed get most of their information about the zombie outbreak early on, since that’s how it would have happened 20 years ago. Today, everyone would be on their phones.
Several US and UK trailers and TV spots round out the platter.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
