Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

The most notable thing about Shaun of the Dead may be its modesty. I say this not as a slight against the movie -- to imply that modesty is all it has going for it -- but to say that in an era when genre filmmaking is at, most likely, its most hyperbolic, overextended, high-concept peak, it's gratifying and relieving to watch an unassuming horror/comedy zombie movie in which almost nothing happens.

The plot is essentially a rehash of Wright and Pegg's previous work on the TV show Spaced, in which Pegg is a loutish slacker trapped in adolescence who is eventually motivated to be a more practical approximation of an adult. Unlike the majority of my colleagues, I find Wright's stylistic flourishes towards combining this idea with horror movie tropes, notably the mirroring long-take walks to the store and back only mildly diverting. For me, the jokes about their obliviousness to the outside world's disaster, and the larger implication of our culture's retreat into an awareness-nullifying pop culture womb, go on far too long. Each one is individually okay enough, and the slight knife in the ribs to its own audience is well-appreciated, but it eventually adds up to a bit that is far too drawn out.

More successful is the eventual idea that while we may rise to adversity as it comes, we have cultivated in ourselves a natural inclination towards inaction rather than action. That we take tragedy and untimely circumstance and find a way to weave it back into our daily lives in a way that it no longer stands out or impresses us. This actually unexpectedly predicts many of the ideas Romero would address in Land of the Dead a year later, and is a cynical, but not dishonest, evaluation of the cultural landscape of 2004. Without mentioning it or even alluding to it, Shaun of the Dead seems like the flipside of Spider-Man 2's assumptions about the world post-9/11. It is mostly due to my own predilections that I find Spider-Man 2's ideas more compelling and, I hope, more accurate, but I suspect the truth is sometimes closer to Shaun's side.