Coming of Age in the Apocalypse: Shaun of the Dead

Welcome Readers,

Before getting into today’s post I wanted to make sure a few things are clear. This post presumes that you have watched Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. There will be SPOILERS throughout the post, and I recommend you watch the film as it is one of the best comedies ever made.

The other thing is that this will be a mixture of plot analysis and psychological criticism, presuming the character of Shaun as viewpoint for many of the films scenes and camera views. I feel the post details how and why pretty well.

Now, with that said, we can begin.

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Shaun of the Dead is the first in what would come to be known as the Cornetto Trilogy - a thematically loose collection of films characterized by genre satire and coming of age stories set during different catastrophic events. Made by the trio Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, the trilogy comes in three flavors: red for blood in Shaun of the Dead, blue for police uniforms in Hot Fuzz, and green for the *spoilers* in World's End.

The titular Shaun is a twenty-nine year old man who has settled into comfortable, but not admirable positions. He goes to the same pub night after night, works at the same small time job, hangs out with the same sloppy roommate, and is so concerned with people thinking good of him that he cannot help anyone but himself. It’s Shaun’s character that informs the entire film and his psychology is the basis of the analysis I’ll be leading.

Shaun of the Dead is really all about growing up from being a slacker afraid to make changes. The zombies in the backdrop of Shaun’s world represent the underlying criticism of a world made up of mindless drones, people going to work, to the pub, to home, day after day. Shaun lives a very routine life safely in this world, and the only people really trying to break him out are the people who he cares for most and treats with the least respect. The film is his journey to breaking that trap he made for himself.

Shaun may seem prototypical. Many films starring young men, or even older men, will deal with a psychological reality that the men have against everyone who loves them. In the end, its often part of the male power fantasy that the aspects of his life most contentious with his loved ones are the traits that saves or teaches everyone around him. Just think of Woody Harrelson’s hardcore southern Tennessee from Zombieland, or any other “Dad” movie out there.

The side characters in Shaun of the Dead are representations of the insecurities and mental blocks holding Shaun back. His roommates, Pete and Ed, represent the grown-up fighting with the child within Shaun. Shaun’s girlfriend, Liz, also has two roommates, David and Dianne, who represent Logic and Art. That they are in a dating relationship isn’t an accident. Key is that Shaun dislikes both, they are two options that seem to antagonize Shaun throughout the film. The final two characters are Shaun’s step-dad, Phil, and his mother, Barbara. Phil’s attempt at fatherly advice and Shaun’s avoidance of that represents his childish nature – he shies away from that which could benefit him most. Barbara on the other hand is timid, nice, and protective. She operates as a safety net that Shaun enjoys for the most part. He only avoids the safe and protective Barbara because of the contention he has with Phil.

The embedding of every conflict mentioned above takes place in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Shaun is losing his grasp on everyone. He refuses to put more effort into his relationship when its needed most, he refuses to connect with his step-dad, he refuses to accept that his roommate is keeping him immature, and most important, the film is teaching us in the audience to see things from Shaun’s perspective. Everyone around Shaun are a bunch of mindless, characterless drones. The people telling Shaun to be more adult, with the exception of Liz, are antagonistic and mean. Ed is hilarious and gets the best lines and the best writing and is easily the most fun character in the film. That’s because that’s how Shaun views all of this. We sympathize because his view is what guides the film.

This is most clear in the scene when Shaun and Ed come back from drinking with the record player. Pete storms down and throws the record out the window. Shaun, attached to the past as he is, says, “That was the second album I ever bought!” and Pete brutally attacks Shaun’s lack of ability to grow up. Pete, the character whose voice of brutal adult reason, tells Shaun to “sort your fucking life out, mate!” Ed, the character whose voice of childish pruning, mutters, “Prick.”

Once the zombie apocalypse begins, Shaun’s collective psychology gets entirely summed up in his plan of survival. His plan is to kill his step-dad (who Shaun presumes is zombified), rescue his girlfriend (important to note her roommates are not included in the planning scenes), go to the Winchester (his literal safety blanket), and “wait for all this to blow over.” From Shaun’s perspective, this plan is perfect. He gets the people he wants, cuts out the people he doesn’t care about, and gets to spend the rest of a bad situation at the same place he’s spent the rest of his adult life, drinking in a pub.

Things start going wrong as soon as Shaun gets to his Mom’s house. Phil isn’t a zombie, he seems to be perfectly fine. Shaun tries to leave him anyway, because changing his plan would be uncharacteristic, and he argues with his Mom for a while. Phil comes in and says, “At some point you’re just going to have to step up and be a man,” at which point Shaun stares at a knife in his hand.

The next shot is Shaun stepping out with his Mom and Step-Dad. This is being a man, the film implies, and Shaun, with his head bowed as if he’s been knocked about or forced into it, is going along with it. But in perfect representation of what I said before, Ed has stalled things. He’s crashed the car in an effort to ensure that he can drive Phil’s Jaguar. Ed is a representation of Shaun’s immaturity, his inability to move on, and this culminates when Phil is attacked and bitten – from this point forward Shaun’s plan is going accordingly, thanks to Ed.

When Shaun arrives at Liz’s flat he offers his plan of rescue and after a bit of arguing its accepted. David and Dianne come into their own characters. David is represented as logic. Logic appears to be the one thing that Shaun hates, because Logic would dictate that he do more than loaf around in his life. It also argues against going to the Winchester. Dianne on the other hand plays off of this. She keeps David in check, but also gives way to her own desire to allow David to maintain his unrequited, though characteristic, love for Liz.

One of the funnier scenes in the film comes when everyone pretends to be zombies. They have to do this to pass through a sea of zombies to reach the Winchester. It’s part of the film’s genre criticism, but it points out something interesting. Going to the Winchester night after night was already Shaun’s most zombie-like behavior. That Simon Pegg happens to act like the best zombie in the preparation scene is no accident. Plus, his mother doesn’t even have to act. They each go out at various levels of imitation and begin crossing the street to their newfound base of operations.

But that doesn’t quite work. When they get to the door they can’t seem to get in. And here we get David offering a solution of breaking the window. Several characters say no. They need a plan that won’t compromise their security. We understand that David’s emotions interrupt his own logical perspective. Logic encouraged by fear and emotion gives way to impulse.

Ed seems to compromise their security by answering his phone, but there’s not a huge danger until Shaun steps up and finally berates Ed for endangering him and the rest of the group. Shaun is, at this point, metaphorically shouting at himself. That the horde is now watching in stunned silence at the outbreak of human presence in their group is not only hilarious, but the zombies almost seem to have faces that read like criticism of the humanity on display.

Shaun makes himself the target of the zombie horde and lets the others get in through David’s impulsive window breaking. When he returns many things begin to go wrong. Shaun didn’t “give them the slip” as he thought he had. And in the midst of defending his safety blanket, Barbara begins to succumb from a secret zombie bite. This is the climax for Barbara, who kept important information from Shaun in order to protect him. As Shaun is standing up for and fighting to keep his chosen bunker safe, Barbara’s death is the undermining of that action, zombies are one thing, but the death of Shaun’s protective and doting Mother is a straw he won’t be able to recover from.

It’s David, the logic brain, who first says “she’ll become one of them.” This is the part when Shaun of the Dead shows its love of the genre. There is usually a turning scene in a zombie film, there’s usually a debate about whether to take care of the problem before it’s a problem or to wait.

But there is a problem, there has always been a problem in Shaun’s life. Dave’s logic in this situation is literally asking Shaun to step up to the plate and truly defend himself from something that could harm their whole operation. And Shaun, characteristically, argues that it’s not going to happen.

This scene in literally any other zombie flick is by the numbers. Here it is used to further detail the underlying subtext and psychology of all of its characters.

The fallout of the previous scene leads to David falling back with the rifle and pulling the trigger at Shaun. Logic killing the psychology holding it back. David’s trigger pull is representational of the last shred of Shaun’s immaturity. With his Mom gone and the bar compromised he’s beginning to realize the change that has to be made. His plan to save everyone in the bar is gone and he has failed. The safety blanket is beginning to crumble.

David and Dianne make their exit from the film and Shaun, Liz, and Ed are all that remain defending the Winchester. Pete shows up, once again, the adult voice in Shaun’s life, and finally makes good by biting Ed. The three wind up behind the bar, and they set fire to it. Shaun and Liz work together to finish off the literal safety blanket. They then end up in the bar.

It’s here where Ed eventually perishes and Liz and Shaun rekindle their relationship. With literally everyone out of the way and all of Shaun’s immaturity shriveling, dead, and burning around him, he’s capable of accepting and admitting what an idiot he has been. He couldn’t save anyone. This is the biggest subversion in the film. That Shaun is a male power fantasy living in a zombie apocalypse is the metaphor of the young self-assured selfish man becoming a selfless well-developed adult.

Facing their deaths they go up to the street level to fight and face their deaths.

But they’re saved. The zombie apocalypse is cancelled, and Shaun finds already well established adult friends awaiting him above. Shaun has arrived. While Shaun and Liz remain “human” the world around them has changed. Zombies are as much a part of the culture as they ever were, showing us comedic clips where zombies more or less have replaced by people in things they were doing anyway.

Shaun and Liz live together, but Ed is in the shed. Shaun ducks out to play video games with him and the film ends. The symbolism is pretty basic, but Ed, Shaun’s childish side is still alive and well but in its proper place. Under control, small, in the back. Shaun has grown up. He has made it through the apocalypse to come of age.

Shaun of the Dead is the first of the Cornetto trilogy. It deals with the psychological traps, safety nets, and aging up of one man, Shaun, who overcomes the last grasp of his early twenties childhood to become a well-adjusted and caring man.

If you have not enjoyed the other two films of the Cornetto Trilogy, Hot Fuzz and World’s End, I recommend you do. Hot Fuzz is about Shaun’s literal opposite, a man who loses things not through his lack of effort, but through his by the numbers way of doing his job. World’s End is a bit more out there, imagine if Shaun had never gone through the zombie apocalypse and wound up at forty-five, an alcoholic obsessed with his childhood.

Each of these films represent truly golden films, films that merge satire with appreciation, that cut through tropes and use them to make better films than what they came from, genre destruction merged with elevation, literary film. I cannot recommend these enough to anyone and everyone.

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