Shaun of the dead is a comedy horror. In the movie we follow the main characters struggles with mundane things such as relationship problems. However, his life changes as a zombie outbreak occurs and in his desperate attempts to save all his loved ones. The movies main characters consist of Shaun, Ed (Shaun's best friend), Liz (Shaun's girlfriend), David and Dianne (Liz’s best friends)
Shaun of the dead is the first movie, made in 2004, of the Three flavours cornetto trilogy which contains Shaun of the dead, hot fuzz and the world’s end. The movie was written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg who also stars in the movie. The idea of Shaun of the dead came by an episode of ‘spaced’ a tv show written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, who also appeared in Shaun of the dead, and directed by Edgar Wright. In the episode, Tim, Simons character takes speed and stay up all night playing resident evil 2 then hallucinates fighting zombies.
A lot of the techniques used in cinematography and the use of foreshadowing really make this film unique. One of the camera shots Wright does best is the use of close-up shots with intense sound effect on objects that quickly zoom in then transition into another object for example when Shaun is getting ready. This creates an idea of action and speed. Also, within the writing Simon and Edgar create a lot of hidden speech or actions for foreshadowing and parallelism in different contexts. One-way foreshadowing is created is after Shaun and Liz break up Ed proceeds to say what the plans are for the following day: ‘Bloody Mary first thing.’ represent the first zombie they encounter in their back garden, ‘a bit at the King’s head.’ representing Phillip Shaun's stepdad being attacked, ‘couple at the little princess’s’ foreshadowing them picking up Liz David and Dianne, ‘stagger back here’ foreshadowing them acting like zombies to get to the Winchester ‘and bang, back at the bar for shots’ representing the final fight in the Winchester. Also, an example of parallelism is the contrast of Shaun's walk to the shop when everything was ‘normal’ in similar shot there is another scene of him walking to the shops with the same camera angles however we see the contrast that has occurred as background features show danger.
With a mix of the writing, directing and filming techniques and the amazing actors and convincing relationships the movie takes the watcher on a journey of laugher to seriousness then have us crying our eyes out.
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