- published: 20 Oct 2006
- views: 5313779
Shaun of the Dead is a 2004 British horror zombie comedy directed and co-written by Edgar Wright, and co-written and starring Simon Pegg alongside Nick Frost. Pegg plays Shaun, a man attempting to get some kind of focus in his life as he deals with his girlfriend, his mother and stepfather. At the same time, he has to cope with an apocalyptic uprising of zombies.
The film is the first of what Pegg and Wright call The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Hot Fuzz (2007) as the second and The World's End (TBA) as the third.
The film was a critical and commercial success in the UK, and the US. It received a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 76 out of 100 at Metacritic. Shaun of the Dead was a BAFTA nominee. Pegg and Wright considered a sequel that would replace zombies with another monster, but decided against it as they were pleased with the first film as a stand-alone product, and thought too many characters died to continue the story.
Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a salesman whose life has no direction. His younger colleagues show him no respect, he has a rocky relationship with his stepfather, Phillip (Bill Nighy), a tense relationship with his housemate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), because of Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun's crude best friend who lives on their couch and deals marijuana, and his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), is dissatisfied with their social life, as it consists primarily of spending every evening at the Winchester, Shaun and Ed's favourite pub. They never do anything alone together – Shaun always brings Ed, and Liz brings her flatmates, David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis).