Shaun of the Dead Review

Prepare yourselves for a fantastic night out because, my friends, "Shaun of the Dead" is an absolute cracker. From the creators of surreal sitcom "Spaced" comes a characteristically brilliant mix of the bizarre and the banal, all laced with more a good old helping of gore. The setting? The suburbs of North London. Our hero? Simon Pegg's 29-year-old Shaun, whose many problems include a dead-end job complete with lippy juniors, an arse-kickingly annoying stepfather ("Love Actually's" Bill Nighy) and a girlfriend in Kate Ashfield's Liz who's had enough of the ever-constant presence of his farting layabout of a best friend, Ed. Dumped and downhearted, Shaun drowns his sorrows at the local pub only to awaken the next day to not only a stinking hangover but a world where the dead have risen and a full-scale zombie apocalypse is underway.

When the filmmakers themselves describe their flick as a "rom-zom-com," you know you're going to get more than your usual cinematic fare. And in at least the first hour, Pegg and his "Spaced" director and co-writer Edgar Wright deliver brilliantly on both the laughs and the scares. Stand-out scenes include a hilarious sequence where our dazed and confused hero fails to comprehend the impending apocalypse going on all around him, Shaun and Ed arguing over which LP from their cherished vinyl collection to lob at the advancing undead and a climactic carnage set to a soundtrack of Queen. The tension may not quite rise to the necessary heights in the relatively giggle-free last half hour, but with so many laugh-out loud moments early on, you'll be chuckling all the way home.