This ‘Shaun of the Dead’ Scene Defines Horror-Comedy

The trio would reunite in 2004 for Wright’s second feature film. Zombie named Sean. It was the first part of what would later be known as the “Three Flavors Trilogy of Cornetto”. All three films were directed by Wright and all starred Pegg and Frost. Next Zombie named Sean they took over the buddy cop genre in 2007 hot fluffand then looked at the apocalypse from a comic perspective in 2013. End of the world. Zombie named Sean perhaps the best of them all, because he used humor to give a fresh take on the zombie genre, long before it got played out with the advent of the walking Dead. This set the stage for what was to come in their filmography.

Zombie scene from Sean of the Dead is so absurd it’s actually funny

Zombie named Sean defines what a horror comedy should achieve with one well-crafted scene at the beginning of a movie. Before that, Wright gives viewers a quick but effective setup to get us hooked. This is where we meet Simon Pegg as the titular Sean, an aimless man living with an even more aimless man, his out-of-work best friend, Nick Frost’s Ed. Their apartment is a mess, with pizza boxes strewn across the floor. They move and react slowly like zombies. When Sean sits down on the couch to play a video game with Ed in the morning, Ed casually reminds Sean that he has a job, so Sean puts the controller back and gets up without a word, without any liveliness in his actions. He repeats the same mindless routine he’s done a thousand times: going to the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and putting on the badge of the electronics store he works at. All he can do is sigh when he sees himself in the mirror. You don’t have to think too much to see Wright comparing Sean to a zombie.

The setup continues with another roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), complaining about Ed leaving the front door open all night (hello, omen!) and how unlucky he is. Sean’s life gets even worse when his girlfriend LizKeith Ashfield), finally falls ill with his apathy and breaks up with him. All along, we’ve seen little hints that something is going wrong in the big world around them, with other people in the neighborhood acting weird, all without Sean even noticing. Perhaps this could happen. We all sometimes get so wrapped up in our own stresses that we don’t notice what’s going on around us.

Zombie named Sean turns it into a comedy, taking this oblivion to the extreme. It turns out that the most important thing that happens in the world is the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, when people get sick. The next time Sean leaves his apartment to cross the street to the local store, he lowers his head and never sees how empty the streets are of people. He doesn’t notice the car alarms going off or one car with a broken windshield. He doesn’t see that shuffling zombie in the distance either. Every second brings something more obvious that should grab his attention. There’s a living person running away from something. Nothing. Zombies closer. Nope. Overturned bicycles and fruits near the store. Never sees. At the store, he goes to the fridge to get a Coke and never sees two bloody handprints on the glass right in front of him. He even slips in the blood, but does not bother to look down. The man who works in the store is undead in the background, not at the counter, but Sean is just complaining about the lack of newspapers.

After returning from the store, things got even worse. More zombies have arrived and they are all getting closer. The alarm goes off again, glass shatters, dogs bark, and Sean is still staring ahead. One zombie almost touches him and Sean mutters, “Sorry, I don’t have change.” It’s all absurd, but that’s how the best horror comedy is made. You take an unrealistic situation, like a zombie attack, and turn events on their head, forcing the characters to react in unexpected ways. What could be more insane than a zombie attack? Some people don’t even notice what’s going on.

Edgar Wright remembers to make his zombies a terrible threat

The comic moments continue as Sean returns to the apartment. The TV keeps reporting on the attacks, but Sean just changes channels, completely bored. Finally, he is forced to face the larger reality outside of his bubble when Ed walks in and says, “There’s a girl in the garden.” They find a woman in the backyard with her back to them, slowly rocking back and forth. Sean laughs as she turns around sharply and we see her dead gray eyes. “She’s so drunk.” When she attacks him, Ed finds it amusing, so he takes a picture. It only gets serious when Sean pushes this supposed drunk woman away from him and she falls on the pipe, impaling her through the stomach. He must have just killed her, but instead she’s impossibly pulling herself up. They take this seriously, running inside to call for help. As Ed peeks out again, another even more grotesque zombie has joined the woman at the window.

This little moment does so much. It’s funny to see how Sean and Ed consider a drunk woman to be an obvious zombie. It’s also funny to see her being impaled because it comes out of nowhere. But the horror is in the way they react. Horror comedy works by making characters funny by how dumb they are, or in the case of something like gremlins, villains are funny, but a hero can’t play a prank on a villain. This neutralizes them and relieves all tension. If the protagonist is not afraid of what is chasing them, why should we be afraid? If at this point Sean and Ed laugh at the zombies and just walk away, then who cares. The movie is over. We no longer have any reason to keep watching them. They must react in shock. They need to run to a safe place and call someone for help. The zombies must eventually break in. The horror in a horror comedy is supposed to be a threat, even through the laughter.

That’s why when the scene goes on, the comedy goes even further, it has to stay down to earth. Sean and Ed back out into the yard, frantically throwing the most useless household items like a toaster and an empty laundry basket at the clumsy ghouls. All this has no effect. They then resort to throwing records at them, with the laughter coming not only from them using such obviously bad weapons, but from Sean arguing about which records they should use. However, they do not laugh with us. They are scared. The music is scary. Zombies are not funny at all. What’s funny is how Sean and Ed try to deal with them.

You can’t have a horror comedy without both attributes equally represented. As funny as actors like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are, it’s not enough. You also need fears. Edgar Wright’s Monsters Zombie named Sean scare. They become even more terrifying as many characters are killed and torn apart in the most gruesome ways. Before it’s all over, Sean will lose several people he loves, including Ed. It’s scary when Ed gets bitten towards the end of the movie, but the fright is followed by madness as Sean keeps his dead zombie friend tied up in the shed where he’ll go to play video games with him. From the beginning to the end, Zombie named Sean masterfully defines how a horror comedy should work.