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Shaun Of The Dead Satire

Decent Essays

Three of the most clever, entertaining, and all around well-made films I’ve ever seen are the three that make up what is known as The Cornetto Trilogy: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. While the first two very clearly take well known genres and play on conventional expectations of them, the last breaks out of the box slightly and thus makes it harder to define. The one unifying factor to be found in all of them, aside from the obvious recasting of main characters and director, is that they can all be considered comedies. However, similar to the way Shaun of the Dead uses the concept of a zombie movie and creates a movie falling into that category that breaks the mold of other previous zombie films, all three take the category …show more content…

Whereas most romantic comedies have romance at the forefront with humor running throughout, Shaun of the Dead encompassed humor in various ways. In fact, the focus it puts on Shaun’s relationship with Liz is equal to that of Shaun’s relationship with Ed. While that doesn’t push the film widely outside the category of a romantic comedy, the fact that it combines equal emphasis on both relationships in addition to fairly equal emphasis on zombies is what definitely pushes the limits of audience expectations of the romantic comedy …show more content…

The fast-paced humor and physical comedy (most notably the fence gag) are obviously elements of screwball and slapstick comedies, respectfully. Additionally, typical focal points of zombie movies are refused or defied as well. The zombies are prominently not referred to as zombies. A decision was made and kept to not reveal the origins of the zombie apocalypse, an element noted to be one of interest after fear of radiation was exploited and used as the reason behind the rising of the undead (Altman, 218). The hero of the movie, Shaun, isn’t much of a hero to go with; he defies narrative ideas of a hero, as pointed out with the line “for a hero, you’re quite a hypocrite!” Finally, the so desired and so expected happy ending is bittersweet; the road to this ending being difficult in and of itself. Many people close to Shaun die (such as his mother), relationships are bared down to their harsh realities (for instance, between David and Di), and even though his best friend technically survives, he exists as a zombie. Though, considering the way Ed was living, one could equate him as already acting like a zombie and surmise that his fate didn’t ultimately change much of who he was. Yet the fact still remains his state of undead isn’t an ending one would picture as being happy; it’s more like the best outcome,

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