There are those who believe film is art, meant to edify, uplift and inspire. Not I. I am a philistine and proud of it. Beyond the reprehensible pretention of calling movies “film,” the silver screen was created for one thing and one thing only: entertainment. Well, two things. Entertaintment and escapism. I abhor films with a “message.” It was with those joys in mind that I settled in with my honey in front of the tube on an abnormally globally warmed Christmas eve to be entertained and escape with that never-to-be classic “Shaun of the Dead.” I wanted humor. I wanted belly laughs. I wanted blood, I wanted guts, I wanted gore.

Sure, there was plenty of all that. But damned if this movie—I might actually and with utmost contempt call it a “film”—doesn’t actually suck you in like some flesh-starved zombie on a binge and spew out—shudder! -- a message. Maybe even two or three messages. The horror! We find our hapless hero Shaun (played by co-writer Simon Pegg) staggering through his day, living with a cretinous childhood chum Ed (Nick Frost) and another get a head roomie. His days are mind-numbing, hypnotic lurches to the local quick stop shop for ice cream-and-a-beer breakfasts, to his brain-pithing job, through the limbo of endless family life frictions with mum and step-dad, to his years’ long nonrelationship with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield). All around he glimpses and barely notices anonymous unspeakable acts and neighbors similarly plodding through their days with eyes aglaze. Surfing the channels on the telly Shaun easily misses stories about the developing apocalypse amidst the usual shows and newscasts. Our hero and most everyone around him ALREADY ARE ZOMBIES! And writer/director Edgar Wright proceeds to put meat on those bones.

Unlike Romero’s 1978 classic sequel Dawn of the Dead which this film purports to spoof, the commentary goes well beyond chewing the fat on the gluttony of American consumerism. Why this movie is a metaphor for the very lives we lead! No wonder that, when encountering their first real “Z-word” in the back yard, our hero and his bud assume she is just very drunk. Marvelous mayhem ensues, with cricket bat and garden shovel and a treasured LP collection (speaking of dead?!) the main implements of deconstruction. Eventually they concoct a masterful plan which includes holing up at the same place they spend every night—the local pub—snacking on beer nuts and quaffing a pint or two until the troubles all just go away.
Well, they don’t go away. They keep on coming, in larger and undeniable and overwhelming numbers. Along the way there are oedipal twists and edible trysts. Eventually our hero and his off-again-on-again love interest confront the ultimate. With three undead left and only two bullets, they decide it’s ok to have a smoke. Do not see this movie if you seek only entertainment and escape. Do see it if you want brain food.