OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 18, TBC MINS
Expanded from a two-minute fantasy sequence in Spaced, this is Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright’s way of combining all their comedy obsessions (zombies, pubs, suburbia and soft rock) into one proper film. The result? A snappy gorefest with hit potential.
Pegg is Shaun, a loafer on the verge of 30 who cocks up at work, forgets Mother’s Day and gets dumped by his girlfriend all on the same day. None of which seems so bad the next morning, when London is over-run with zombies. With his flatmate (Spaced co-star Nick Frost) he learns how to decapitate them using spades or Dire Straits records and sets out to rescue Mum from zombie stepdad (Bill Nighy), find his ex and lead them all to the safety of the pub. Having raced through a hundred sight gags, witty bickering and a grisly dismemberment, events are wrapped up in an allegory?zombies are always allegorical?about friendship and ‘surviving’ relationship damage. Sounds twee, but it puts enough meat on the film’s rotting bones to make it a real date movie, as well as a corpse-defiling laugh.