Horror comedies have long been popular among moviegoers by combining the best of both worlds. No film genres get a bigger physical reaction than the heart-pumping anxiety of horror and the deep belly laughs of comedy. If the two are combined just right, where the scares are still aplenty and not watered down by the jokes, a perfect film straddling the line between horror and comedy can be made. It's been done for decades. Gremlins got it right in the 1980s, as did The Return of the Living Dead and the Evil Dead trilogy. It's been done a lot more recently with films like Zombieland, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and The Cabin in the Woods.
Plopped in the middle of these eras came an Edgar Wright film released almost twenty years ago. In 2004, he reinvented the zombie genre with Shaun of the Dead, a horror comedy which leans into both genres heavily with a wild, extended opening zombie reveal scene that gives viewers a taste of just the type of film they're in store for.
‘Shaun of the Dead’ Is the First of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy
Edgar Wright might be a big name in cinema today thanks to impressive films such as the 2017 action hit Baby Driver and 2021's serious horror film, Last Night in Soho, like so many big name directors, he got his start in comedy. That start's first imprint came in 1995 with the British western spoof feature film, A Fistful of Fingers. It was a few years later when Wright's career really took off, however, when he was at the helm of the popular British sitcom, Spaced, which ran from 1999-2001. It's there that he worked with actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
The trio would reunite in 2004 for Wright's second feature film, Shaun of the Dead. It was the first of what would later be known as the "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy." The three films were all directed by Wright, and all starred Pegg and Frost. Following Shaun of the Dead, they took on the buddy cop genre with 2007's Hot Fuzz, then stared down the apocalypse from a comic angle with 2013's The World's End. Shaun of the Dead is arguably the best of the bunch for how it used humor to take a new look at the zombie genre, long before it became played out with the arrival of The Walking Dead. It set the stage for what was to come in their filmography.
'Shaun of the Dead's Opening Zombie Scene Is So Absurd It's Hilarious
Shaun of the Dead defines what a horror comedy is supposed to accomplish with one well crafted scene in the beginning of the film. Before that, Wright gives viewers a quick but effective setup to pull us in. It's here that we meet Simon Pegg as the titular Shaun, a directionless man living with an even more directionless man, his unemployed best friend, Nick Frost's Ed. Their apartment is a mess, with pizza boxes strewn across the floor. They move and react slowly like they're the zombies. When Shaun sits down on the couch to play a videogame with Ed in the morning, Ed nonchalantly reminds Shaun that he has work, so Shaun puts the controller back down and gets up without a word, without any life in his actions. He goes through the same mindless routine he's done a thousand times of using the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and putting on his nametag for the electronics store he works at. All he can do is sigh when he sees himself in the mirror. You don't have to think too hard to see that Wright is comparing Shaun to a zombie.
The setup continues, with another roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), complaining about Ed leaving the front door open all night (hello foreshadowing!) and about what a loser he is. Shaun's life gets even worse when his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), finally gets sick of his apathy and breaks up with him. All the while we've seen little hints of something going wrong in the bigger world around them, with other people in the neighborhood acting strange, all without Shaun even looking up to notice. Perhaps that could happen. We all get so wrapped up in our own stresses sometimes that we're oblivious to what's going on around us.
Shaun of the Dead turns that into comedy by taking that obliviousness to the extreme. It turns out that the bigger thing going on in the world has been the start of the zombie apocalypse as people fall ill. The next time Shaun steps out of his apartment to go across the street to the local shop, he has his head down, and never sees how empty the streets are of people. He doesn't notice car alarms going off or one car with a smashed in windshield. He doesn't see that one shambling zombie far off in the distance either. Every second brings something more obvious that should catch his attention. There's a living person running from something. Nothing. There's a closer zombie. Nope. Turned over bikes and fruit outside the store. Never sees it. Inside the store he goes to the cooler to grab a Coke and never sees the two bloody hand prints on the glass right in front of him. He even slips in blood but doesn't bother to look down. The man who works at the store stands undead in the background and not at the counter, but Shaun just complains about there not being any newspapers.
Back outside the store, things have gotten worse. More zombies have arrived and all are getting closer. More alarms go off, glass breaks, dogs bark, and Shaun still looks ahead. One zombie almost touches him, and Shaun mumbles, "Sorry, I haven't got any change." It's all absurd, but that's how the best horror comedy hits. You take an unrealistic situation, such as a zombie attack, and you turn the events on their head by having characters react in unexpected ways. What's more insane than a zombie attack? Someone not even noticing it happening.
Edgar Wright Doesn’t Forget To Make His Zombies a Scary Threat
The comic parts continue when Shaun is back inside the apartment. Reports continue on the TV about attacks, but Shaun just flips through the channels, completely bored. He is finally forced to confront a wider reality outside his bubble when Ed walks in and says, "There's a girl in the garden." They find a woman in their backyard standing with her back to them, slowly rocking back and forth. Shaun laughs when she very turns around, and we see her dead, gray eyes. "She's so drunk." When he's attacked by her, Ed thinks it's funny, so he takes a picture. It only gets serious when Shaun pushes this supposed drunk woman off of him, and she falls on a pipe, impaling her through the stomach. He for sure just killed her, but instead she impossibly pulls herself up. This they take seriously, running inside to call for help. When Ed looks out again, another, even more grotesque zombie has joined the woman at the window.
This little moment does so much. It's funny to see Shaun and Ed think an obvious zombie is a drunk woman. It's funny as well to see her get impaled because it comes out of nowhere. But it becomes horror in how they react. A horror comedy works by the heroes being funny in how obtuse they are, or in the case of something like Gremlins, the villains being funny, but it can't work by the hero making a joke of the villain. That neutralizes them and takes away all suspense. If the protagonist isn't scared of the thing after them, why should we be? If, in this moment, Shaun and Ed laugh at the zombies and simply walk away, then who cares. The movie is over. We no longer have a reason to keep watching them. They need to react in shock. They need to flee for safety inside and call for someone to help them. The zombies have to eventually break in. The horror in a horror comedy has to be a threat, even through the laughs.
That's why, as the scene continues, the comedy going even further, it has to still stay grounded. Shaun and Ed retreat to the yard, desperately throwing the most useless household items like a toaster and an empty laundry basket at the lumbering ghouls. All of it has no effect. They then resort to chucking records at them, with the laughs happening not just because they're using such obviously bad weapons, but also with Shaun bickering on what records they should use. They're not laughing with us, however. They're scared. The music is scary. The zombies aren't funny at all. What's funny is how Shaun and Ed are trying to handle them.
You can't have a horror comedy without both attributes equally represented. As funny as actors like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are known for being, that's not enough. You also need scares. Edgar Wright's monsters in Shaun of the Dead are frightening. They become even more terrifying as many characters are killed and ripped apart in the most gruesome ways. Shaun is going to lose several people he loves before it's all over, including Ed. It's scary when Ed is bitten toward the end of the film, but the fright is followed up by folly, with Shaun keeping his dead zombie friend tied up in the shed, where he'll go out to play videogames with him. From beginning to end, Shaun of the Dead expertly defines how a horror comedy should work.