By Ben Bussey
See that dazed, weary, numb-with-disbelief look on the faces of those two fine-looking gentlemen in the picture above? How many of us are wearing an almost-identical expression on realising that Shaun of the Dead was released on this date TEN WHOLE YEARS AGO?
Okay, let me follow up that question with another question. How do we define a ‘game-changer?’ On what basis do we deem a movie to have had so indelible an impact on the cultural consciousness that it has well and truly changed the game? As clear as the meaning of that term should be, I’ve found it can be a little divisive, particularly when it comes to the past decade or so – and movies which not everyone is necessarily fond of. See, on the one hand, to declare a movie a game-changer isn’t necessarily a guarantor of quality. Whether we like it or not, Saw, Hostel, Grindhouse, and the remakes of The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre all changed the game for horror thus far this century, in that they set a format which a slew of other filmmakers were able to duplicate, largely dominating the genre landscape in recent memory. Whether or not any of those films actually broke new ground, or was even necessarily good… well, that’s open to debate.
Naturally, then, many of us would prefer to judge the game changed only by films which truly raise the bar; not just movies which present an easily imitable/marketable template, but those which fine-tune its specific subgenre to as near perfection as possible, preferably introducing hitherto unseen elements in the process, resulting in something designed not simply to make back its budget on opening weekend, but to do what movies are really supposed to do: be loved, obsessed over, and endlessly revisited, with new rewards to be found with each repeat viewing.
I imagine I’m preaching to the choir here when I say that, by either definition, Shaun of the Dead is an inarguable game-changer – and on several counts. It changed the game for horror, and comedy, and British cinema overall. Not bad for a film with such a silly pun for a title which was the big screen debut of some people who made a sitcom.
Now, I have to make a confession – I wasn’t a Spaced fan when Shaun of the Dead came out. I tend to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to TV, and in that era before the internet had quite taken over, the buzz around the show just hadn’t built so much. I think I’d caught one or two episodes in passing, but at the time I honestly just didn’t get it; it wasn’t until I’d seen Shaun that I tracked the series down, paid attention, and realised how great it was. Honestly, I don’t think I’m too unique in this. The way Spaced is held up today as a British TV comedy classic kind of feels to me like how everyone and their dog loves Thor and Iron Man now, and acts like they were always their favourite superheroes -when really, the wider audience was utterly unfamiliar with them before the movies (not judging, just stating a quite clear fact). But anyway, given my relative unfamiliarity with Wright, Pegg and Frost beforehand, I didn’t necessarily go into Shaun of the Dead the first time with unusually high expectations – as I may have since gone into, say, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Paul and The World’s End…
Okay, now a word of warning to those who haven’t seen Shaun of the Dead: first off, what the hell have you been doing the last decade; secondly, there will be spoilers ahead, as I do my best to break down all the ways that this film truly changed the game…
First off – for a movie whose title is an unabashed play on ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (even opening to music lifted directly from said film) it’s notable that no one ever makes explicit reference to George A Romero’s magnum opus. Indeed, Shaun of the Dead makes a point of keeping use of “the Z-word” itself to a minimum, uttered only a handful of times in the whole film. This might not seem like such a big deal now, but back in 2004 the aftertaste of the Scream trilogy – and worse yet, the first two Scary Movies – still hung heavy in the horror psychosphere (why yes, I have been watching True Detective). Now, I don’t have any great issue with the first two Screams, but the problem with that whole era of the genre was there seemed to be some unspoken, collective agreement among filmmakers that the proper way of making an intertextual reference was to have characters say, “yo, this is just like that bit in [insert movie here], y’all!” ad infinitum…
Happily, Shaun of the Dead does away with all that crap. Yes, there are of course nods aplenty to umpteen zombie movies, but only those who really know the genre are going to pick up on them: I’m happy to say I noticed the restaurant called Fulci’s on first viewing, but I’m astonished that it took me several viewings to pick up on the significance of the name chosen for Shaun’s mum, even when Nick Frost yells, “we’re coming to get you, Barbara!” Much as the likes of The Cabin in the Woods and You’re Next have done since, Shaun of the Dead plays around with the conventions of a horror subgenre without really spelling out in black at white that this is what it’s doing (as Scream and its imitators had done). Theoretically, this approach opens the film up to a far broader audience, as – while prior genre knowledge may enhance the viewing experience – it doesn’t hurt a bit if the viewer has never seen another zombie movie. No doubt this makes Shaun of the Dead a terrific entry point for young or otherwise fledging genre fans.
Speaking of younger viewers… I can vividly recall reading an interview with Wright, Pegg and Frost prior to the film’s release in which they spoke with total certainty of their anticipated 18 certificate, declaring they knew the Resident Evil film was going to be crap as soon as they saw it got a 15. Lo and behold, Shaun of the Dead also got a 15, and I’ve often wondered whether or not it’s a point of pride for the filmmakers that their film would also seem to represent some fairly substantial advances regarding what is deemed acceptable within that certificate. There’s no greater evidence that they were aiming high ratings-wise than Nick Frost’s immortal, “can I get any of you cunts a drink?” uttered within the first minute or so. Time was, even a single use of the dreaded C-word guaranteed you an 18 immediately. And that’s to say nothing of the hideous gut-ripping violence on display; okay, so Shaun of the Dead is hardly one of the goriest films ever made, but Dylan Moran’s Captain Rhodes-esque demise would, again, have been solid 18 material in years gone by. While the credit should also be shared with earlier surprisingly gory 15s like Cabin Fever and Dog Soldiers, Shaun definitely blew the door wide open (as wide open as Moran’s torso, indeed) on how much blood and innards you could spill in the presence of those still too young to drink, smoke, vote or boink. As well as allowing them to hear the word ‘cunt.’
Much as it impacted the British Board of Film Classification, so too did Shaun of the Dead make its presence felt in British cinema overall. While it may seem relatively low budget, by UK standards Shaun of the Dead is a major mainstream production: you only need to see the names Universal, Working Title and StudioCanal attached to realise that. And the great thing is, in spite of its obviously fantastical premise, Shaun of the Dead presents us with a vision of life in Britain which I daresay is far closer to the reality the majority of us know than most of cinema Britain has produced in the last two decades.
So often with British film it feels like there’s no middle ground: either it’s the upper-middle class affluence of Richard Curtis (clearly parodied here by the appropriation of Hugh Grant’s “fuck-a-doodle-doo”), or the painfully bleak kitchen sink realism of Ken Loach, with Guy Ritchie’s mockney gangster dreamland falling somewhere alongside. Shaun of the Dead instead presents a simple, mundane, sleepy British existence, neither drowning in desperation nor sailing by at the top of the ladder. (And perhaps most refreshing of all for a film that takes place in the capital, there isn’t a single London landmark in sight.) This, of course, is not to say the film doesn’t tackle head-on the very real anxieties facing the British working class. It is of course no coincidence that the zombies attack at the very moment that Shaun needs to be woken out of his stupor, change his pub-bound lifestyle, move on in his relationship with Liz, and find more fulfilling work.
Nor is it any coincidence that the film also sees Shaun’s mother and stepfather so painfully torn out of his life, with both the regretful final words of Bill Nighy’s Philip and the truly brutal death scene of Penelope Wilton’s Barbara taking the film to unexpected heights of raw emotion. There’s nothing like the loss of your elders to really bring into focus how limited all this is, leaving you ultimately with two basic options: sink, or swim. Liz pretty much says it all in one line: “If I don’t do something, I’m going to end up going into that pub every night for the rest of my life like the rest of those sad old fuckers, drinking myself to death and wondering what the hell happened.” As for what happens should you fail to move on from that point – The World’s End explores that pretty unflinchingly.
Ah – but now that I’ve finally brought up Liz, it’s time to admit that Shaun of the Dead is not without its problems. Revisiting the film now, it comes as a surprise to see that Nick Frost does not get his expected second billing in the credits, his name only coming after Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield and Lucy Davies (to be fair, it seems they quite reasonably billed Pegg first, then went alphabetically). The fact that I struggle to think of anything else I’ve seen Ashfield in – though Davies popped up in the wonderful Some Guy Who Kills People, of course – underlines the key flaw of the film: the weakness of the female characters. To be fair to Wright and Pegg, they’ve both long since admitted they struggle writing decent parts for women, which might explain the comparative sausage fests that are Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. While the romance between Shaun and Liz may be intended to give the film its heart (they sold it as a ‘rom-zom-com,’ remember) it’s just never felt entirely convincing to me; Pegg and Ashfield just don’t seem to have the kind of intimate chemistry to make you believe they’re in love. Or maybe that’s just to do with the way they chose to handle it; I mean, how many rom-coms can you think of in which the central couple never so much as kiss? (One little peck in the last scene notwithstanding.)
Of course, one person with whom Pegg most definitely did have that kind of chemistry was his Spaced collaborator Jessica Hynes (still Stevenson at the time) – and given the obvious debt that he, Wright and Frost owe her, it’s little wonder they chose to give her a cameo. Alas, this too is also one of the most niggling moments for me, for Hynes’ brief appearances are the only moments which really take us out of the story and into self-indulgent in-jokery, the worst offender being the midway scene on the way to The Winchester, with its little who’s-who of British comedy. Sure, it’s a harmless enough throwaway gag, but even as someone who didn’t watch Spaced at the time, this sequence rubbed me up the wrong way on first viewing, and always grates on me a little since.
Speaking of unsung women – Nira Park. In my ignorance, I’ve never had enough of an idea of what a producer really does to assess her contribution, but she’s been part of the Wright/Pegg/Frost dream team from day one, and surely deserves a major shout-out for helping it all happen.
Anyway, forget the chicks! Shaun of the Dead, as we’re all well aware, is one of the quintessential representations of that 21st century phenomenon, the bromance. As much as the movie might purport to build toward Shaun’s reconciliation with Liz, we all know the real crescendo is his ultimate reunion with Ed, to the heart-tugging notes of Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend.’ I’m sure the homoerotic undertones of Pegg and Frost’s on-screen partnership will be endlessly debated for as long as their films are appreciated, but whichever way you look at it there’s just no question that they’re one of the great screen double acts. As we’ve all long since noticed, any horror comedy that has arrived since will invariably seek to be compared to Shaun of the Dead, and it’s no wonder so many attempt a similar male buddy set-up, from the successful (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), to the not-so successful (Lesbian Vampire Killers).
Indeed, as demonstrated by the somewhat lamentable Lesbian Vampire Killers (or, as it was hilariously retitled in the US, Vampire Killers), Shaun of the Dead opened a new window with low budget British filmmakers: now, they can do laddish comedy/horror crossovers, as well as bargain basement Guy Ritchie knock-offs. Is that harsh? Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s too wide of the mark. Sure, some good horror-comedy crossovers have come out of the UK and Ireland post-Shaun – Grabbers, Cockneys vs. Zombies, and recently Stalled – but I daresay these are by far outweighed by the pale imitations of which Lesbian Vampire Killers (a movie which Danny Dyer turned down) is merely the highest profile offender. I won’t name and shame the worst of them, but by God there’s some shit out there. Happily though, Shaun of the Dead has also inspired some remarkable feats from unexpected places: if you haven’t seen Cuban zom-com Juan of the Dead, you’ve missed a genuine treat.
Okay, I realise that by now Spaced’s Tim Bisley would have long since muttered ‘skip to the end’ – so, even though I could quite easily keep droning on and on about all the things that make Shaun of the Dead one of the greatest films of our time, I should probably draw this to a close. But the fact that I could quite easily find tons more to say on the subject just underlines one of my earlier points: Shaun of the Dead is a film which warrants obsessing over, so heavily laden with little details that you really do find new and interesting things popping out every time you see it, no matter how frequent those repeat viewings might be. It firmly established its core players as being among the best in the business, and a decade on they’re all still at the top of their game, making big movies that play to a big audience, but never losing sight of that vital emphasis on genuine wit, character, storytelling, relatability and emotional honesty that makes their breakthrough film such an endless joy. How’s that for a slice of fried gold, indeed.