Shaun of the Dead is the best romcom for Halloween

Halloween is a hard time for those of us who love romcoms and tend to eschew horror movies with a firm hand. But there is one beacon of hope, gifted to us in 2004 by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright: Shaun of the Dead

Marketed as a “romzomcom”, Shaun of the Dead took what could be a classic romcom and put it within a postmodern zombie movie.

The homage to zombie films of yore, however, and the crowdpleasing gore that came with it, means that the romance of the film has often been overlooked.

But take the zombies out, and as Ethan Alter says, “the film would still play as an above-average romantic comedy.”

All you need is tropes

Shaun of the Dead  has all the hallmarks of a classic romcom. They generally start with conflict, end with a wedding (or at least a very big kiss), have elements of farce and plenty of grand gestures of love somewhere in between.

There’s economic freedom, too, meaning that the characters are free to pursue love, as opposed to money in order to live. In Shaun of the Dead, economic freedom is provided by the apocalypse. Say what you want about zombies, but they do at least get you a day off work when they decide to walk the streets.

But, contrary to popular opinion, the zombies don’t provide the conflict at the heart of the movie. In fact, they don’t even show up until half an hour in. Instead, the film opens with a classic romcom ultimatum from Shaun’s girlfriend Liz who wants her slacker boyfriend to ‘live a little’. Be spontaneous.

Rather than halting the romcom that’s already started, zombies taking over London provide the perfect conditions for Shaun to do just that — become the hero and change his attitude. 

To paraphrase J.K. Rowling, there are some things you can’t share without falling in love, and clobbering a zombie over the head with a snooker cue is one of them. Apparently.

Happy endings

Pegg and Wright’s loyalty to the happy ending is more proof that the film is just as much of a romcom as a horror. Zombie films are not known for their hopeful outlook on life, but the pair gives us a happy ending where we otherwise would not expect to find one.

And the film also has all of the characters you’d expect in a romcom. Culturess fave Lucy Davis plays Liz’s unassuming but resilient best friend Dianne, and it is not zombies but Dianne’s boyfriend David (Dylan Moran) who is the film’s main antagonist, frustrating everyone in his desperation to get one over on Shaun and make Liz fall in love with him instead.

Shaun’s best friend Ed (Nick Frost), meanwhile, plays the part of unwanted third in Shaun and Liz’s relationship and is at the heart of their problems. Ed is “a spectre of Shaun’s apathy,” Pegg says in the film’s Making Of featurette. 

The emotions and dynamics of the group are not zombie-dependent, but zombie-exacerbated. It’s no coincidence that Shaun asks Liz to define the word exacerbate at the start of the film.

Rom + zom =  com?

Romance and horror actually go together surprisingly well. The existence of one does not negate the other and suspending your disbelief, required when watching the undead come out to play, is already a big part of watching romcoms. After all, these are worlds where film stars fall for penniless book store owners and Keira Knightley isn’t creeped out by a video of just her face really zoomed in.

So Wright and Pegg are not asking too much of us to believe that the living dead can wreak havoc on North London and that people can fall in love in the middle of it.

The zombie apocalypse is the catalyst of the drama, not the cause. It’s the fever that causes zombie-ism, not the bite itself. Zombies are not even mentioned when Shaun drunkenly foreshadows the plot of the film — “Go round mum’s, get Liz back, SORT LIFE OUT.” They are just there.

By Pegg’s own estimation, the aim of Shaun of the Dead was to make fun of romcoms. But what he and Wright really did was create their own.

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Colin Firth can board a plane to propose to a woman with whom he doesn’t share a language and zombies can roam free in Islington. Both are ridiculous. And both belong in romcoms.