British cinema doesn't occupy a particularly prominent space in the history of cinema, but in every period of cinema – no matter how you divide it, it has its presence through specific works and people.
In the new century, horror movies have entered a new era, and the once smash hit "zombie theme" has been at a low ebb.
At this time, two young men, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, came out and breathed new life into this subgenre again with a [Zombie Sean].
And these two are not bound by this type of label, and have entered a broader world.
The secret to their realization is also in [Shaun the Zombie].
Because, compared with horror, the comedy flavor of the film is stronger.
Which world is more "stiff"
[Shaun the Zombie] is a good example of following and breaking through the rules.
The film conforms to the traditional "three-act play" structure.
The space it involves is relatively limited:
Sean, Eddard, Peter's home;
Mom Barbara's home;
Liz's home;
Winchester Bar.
In the film industry, the scene is the budget.
Even if it's a ready-made, real house, there are various factors involved in the size of the space, lighting adjustments, camera movements, and so on, and [Shaun the Zombie] is Wright's second feature film certified by himself.
With a total budget of just £4 million, it has also suffered from borrowing from friends and relatives in the absence of sufficient investment.
As a low-budget film, the use of space needs to be carefully considered and planned to maximize the utilization of each scene.
Through four main spaces, the film is divided into three parts.
The main space in the first act is the apartment of Sean and others, and in this 30-minute first act, "Zombie" and "Sean" develop in parallel, and all three main scenes appear except for Barbara's home.
After that, "To Barbara's House" and "To Liz's House" occupy 30 minutes of scenes.
The Winchester pub scene also takes up 30 minutes.
The last nearly ten minutes are left for a new life after the apocalypse.
In today's two-hour movies, 30 minutes of the first act is not too long.
However, [Zombie Sean] only has 100 minutes in total, and the proportion of these 30 minutes is much more "heavy".
This sense of heaviness is aided by the opening five-minute bar conversation scene.
It reminds people of the opening [of the social network].
Both are "breakup dialogues", and they are both very few characters, but the rich and accurate use of shots and lines are shaping characters all the time.
From the studio's opening credits, the background music is a nod to Giorgio Romero's "Night of the Living Dead".
The same tune is also the beginning of the film.
Later, there will be more tributes related to this old movie.
In fact, the source of the creation of the whole movie is also this movie.
If the director is good or not, the first shot can provide strong evidence.
It has been suggested earlier that this is a "breakup scene".
Aside from the distracting background music, the main character, Sean, appears in a positive motion shot, with his eyes glazed off, smoking and drinking, and his attention not being on his girlfriend Liz.
As we move back, we see Sean's face and half (the iconic red tie and white shirt).
Before Sean wakes up from his distraction, we see a small figure in the picture that is in focus, and that is Sean's girlfriend Liz.
The conversation between the two did not use the usual positive and negative play, and when one spoke, the other was in focus and offset.
This makes the conversation between the two not so "counterpoint", and the reason is hidden in the later shots, where both sides have a strong pulling force.
It constitutes the comedy "original" of the film.
We'll talk more about that later.
The point at this moment is how to remind the audience of the unusual dialogue with a simple choice of shots.
This first act prologue is followed by the regular "film intro" and "important credits".
As mentioned earlier, there are no shots to waste on a low budget, and a simple montage is a world dominated by monotonous daily life.
This is an implicit theme in the first act of the film.
In this everyday world, Sean is an extremely marginalized person, and his life status is the derivative meaning of "zombie" in the title.
Of course, this meaning does not exist for Sean and Ed.
Edgar Simon-esque comedy
Edgar Wright's debut novel is called "Finger of the Wild", and [Shaun of Zombies] is similar in that it is a variation on a classic genre.
And the main tone of the variation is comedy.
It is this that allows [Shaun of Zombies] to break through the limitations of horror films and gain wider acclaim.
The addition of Simon Pegg's arrival undoubtedly adds to this comedic effect, and his design of comedic scenes and his own acting ability allow Edgar to achieve the sublimation of comedic effect on a limited budget.
In the end, it was the "chosen one" like Nick Frost who joined.
It shows the comedic power of a crowd's wisdom.
Of course, the trio have their own careers, but when they come together in the "Blood and Ice Cream" universe, they have achieved a 20-year British comedy collaboration.
Nick Frost, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg
Any viewer who has seen the film will be able to recognise the theme of the first act of the film:
Zombie-like everyday.
This theme has largely faded with the arrival of the real zombie apocalypse.
Because for narrative purposes, the theme is to establish a reference within the film – a reference to the zombie world.
The method of cashing in the reference is very simple, substitution, abnormality and repetition.
Sean first experienced the "everyday" world.
The blank eyes on the bus, the indifferent interlacing of the streets, the television and newspaper news all hint at the arrival of a terrible world – and no one seems to care.
Part of it uses a long shot to reinforce the connection of the scene and deepen the viewer's memory.
Because another time didn't happen immediately, after laying out Sean's love and family crisis, the turning point came.
When Sean walks through the "everyday" again, his own routine (hangover) covers it, and Sean passes through the "zombie world", ignoring the great changes just as he is in that everyday world.
This naturally feels ironic.
There is also a kind of self-deprecation here, Sean is not a person who is "independent from the world, only I am awake", his muddy nightmare is extremely real and inescapable.
The problem is that in a larger world, with bigger, more "zombies".
Repeatedly stressed that the mature roommate Peter, always well-dressed, but after becoming a real zombie, always naked.
There is also the salesperson who appeared in their small courtyard, she is a screw-like existence in the supermarket shot, with a wooden expression and slow movements.
So, did she go from a human to a zombie, or from one zombie to another?
In a similar displacement operation, the audience has more information than the character, and this information gap is the basis of the joke/satire.
Sean is "positive" and Ed is "odd".
If Sean is only marginalized in the everyday world, Ed is not in the world at all.
The "Demon King of the Mixed World" attribute on his body makes him react completely differently when facing the zombie world.
He was more fearful than curious, risk-taking than avoiding.
Back in the movie, Ed, the two-point-and-one-line dead house, didn't notice something unusual until a girl appeared in the yard.
When he and Sean find out that it's a "zombie", his first instinct is to twist the camera roll (wanting to take a picture).
This is the abnormality of the abnormal, and the result of this negative and positive is comedy.
After that, Sean's mobility was actually pulled by Ed.
They turned facing zombies into a game.
So there is a choice of which vinyl, shovel & cricket bat to kill - experienced players of the game know that "cold weapons" are more practical than guns that consume bullets.
The genius here is the "cuteness" after the fact.
It was the "cone" that later led to the naming of the "Blood and Ice Cream" trilogy.
According to Simon, he used to sober up with cuteness, so he put it in the movie.
On the other hand, it's also close to the premise of the game, where after a big battle, the characters need to be replenished, and what better way to represent energy than ice cream.
In the end, choosing to be cute is also an anomaly in the abnormal, if you add Ed has to lick the uncovered wrapping paper, in addition to the comedy, there is double the "cuteness"!
Another example is the appearance of his stepfather Philip, where various messages hint at "zombies are coming", when he appears in the shop where Sean works, with his back to everyone, and his exaggerated gasps drive a violent rise and fall of his shoulders.
And then there was no more, and this appropriation of horror clichés highlights the discord between "father and son" – which is reinforced by Sean's repeated emphasis on the "stepfather" at the line level.
A similar operation has two bathroom appearances by another roommate, Peter, both of which are "reflections" of the ultra-cliché prop mirror, diluting the original horror atmosphere and achieving a comedic effect of "turning over the baggage".
Another important technique of comedy is parody.
That is, to transform the meaning of a certain action or bridge.
The most typical is the way Sean appears after waking up.
The camera focuses only on his feet, who are wearing socks and can't get out of the way, the top of his feet rubbing against the ground, like a traditional zombie walking.
One of his yawns ruined everything.
In the scene of bursting into the bar, this involuntary parody becomes an active parody.
In order to be able to blend in with the zombie horde, they had to pretend to be zombies.
The interesting thing here is that there is never a rule for what is called a zombie.
The cause of the zombies in the movie is never fully revealed—there are only possible hints as to why these zombies act the way they do.
Do they rely on sound or smell to identify prey and their own kind?
Are these walking corpses even called "zombies"?
It's all incomprehensible.
The last question also forms a line meme in the film, where the characters, especially Ed, regard the word "zombie" as a taboo word.
Because in the genre throughout the ages, the word is rarely actually used to refer to these "walking dead".
This lack of rigor is not taken seriously in the orthodox zombie world, let alone in a comedy world.
The "laughing fruit" of this parody also comes from the character, Liz's friend Diana is a crappy actor, and the idea of the genius Sean is for her to teach everyone to imitate zombies.
It's a joke of a nesting doll structure.
It satirizes both Diana and the "performance" in zombie movies.
Of course, this irony is love rather than criticism, because our characters, in this crappy way, are about to survive in the age of zombies.
Just like "cross talk", a bridge section pays attention to layer by layer.
If parodies themselves are the first wave of theatrical push, then their debunking is the necessary first layer of reversal.
Ed's phone ringing (bad dealing) seems like a curse at first glance, and soon, Sean's finally losing his mind and losing his voice to accuse him of losing his mind becomes the real trigger.
Please note that even in such an intense and fast-moving comedy scene, the main creator did not forget to create the personalities of the two characters -
Outbreaks were accidental rather than normal for Sean, and Ed's offense was as bad as ever.
The second layer of advancement was a ghost idea that the mean David came up with:
Break huge windows with trash cans so people can "hide in".
The question is, if they can get in, why can't the zombies get in?
Throughout the escape, David was a cynical sneer at Sean and Ed, especially for the "lack of plan".
So what did David do again, he took the initiative to destroy the last fortress.
At this time, the reversal came again, and Sean made a "heroic move", using his flesh and blood to attract all the zombies.
At the moment, zombies are less like terrible predators, more like worldly people attracted by cheap deals.
It's so unreasonable to disassemble this paragraph, how does comedy deal with this situation?
"Shake off the baggage" with a more unreasonable design.
Sean's mother, Barbara, plays the role, picking up the flowers she discarded earlier in the film from the trash can, and she sees the words on it and realizes that the flowers were given to her.
She showed enough surprise instead of wondering why the bouquet was in the trash, and how could his son live?
To borrow the famous line of [Passion as Fire], no one is perfect. People laughed out loud about it.
Bar Wars
The Winchester pub serves as a bastion of last resort.
One is that it is the scene that best fits the character setting.
In addition to staying at home, they are clubbing.
Even as Liz "accuses", Sean and her anniversary are spent here.
Therefore, more than anywhere else, this is the most suitable refuge for the hearts of two otaku.
The second is its spatial characteristics.
It stores enough food and "water" (wine) to make it a reasonable choice from a survival point of view.
Another feature that is easily overlooked is that it has a huge, heavy door that is more effective at keeping out zombie attacks.
Prior to filming the film, Edgar and Simon had gained a large number of fans in the UK with the British drama "House of Deaths", which gave them the conditions to find a group of fans of the series to play zombies in an almost "voluntary" way.
The complexity of filmmaking inevitably creates conflicts and disputes, which indirectly create the tension required for the story.
Whether out of love or a little bit of complaining, they are more than willing to "tear apart" the protagonists in the movie.
In this extra-long passage, Edgar shows off his talent in script, scene scheduling, soundtrack, and more.
In the past 20 years, the soundtrack has reached a new stage in the hands of directors such as Nolan and Villeneuve.
But there are also some directors who show their strength in musical storytelling.
For example, James Gunn, who successfully completed the [Guardians of the Galaxy] series. And Edgar Wright, in 2017's [Extreme Car Theft], also tried to control the action with the music itself.
When we revisit [Shaun the Zombie], we can already see another version of this kind of application.
During the climax of the Winchester Bar showdown, the triggered jukebox starts playing Queen's "Don't stop me now", in which the three main characters, Sean, Ed, and Liz, attack with pool cues in order to fight the zombie-turned-bar owner.
At this point, all the movements follow the movements of the picture.
And the lyrics such as "Don't stop me", "I'm partying", "I'm going to rush", "I want to exceed the speed of light", etc., are also like high-pitched narrations, which heat up the scene.
On the one hand, this satisfies Edgar Wright's unique taste, and on the other hand, it also reconciles the zombie mayhem, which should be bloodier, in terms of concentration.
As Simon Page said, in addition to paying homage to George Romero, their script is more important to paying tribute to [Love Actually], the film's all-encompassing theme of "love", which is also the theme of [Shaun Zombies].
This gives three people a special meaning to fight zombies together.
It takes a special way to interpret it.
The rest of the scene is also dominated by the music, the way David pulls the fuse, the lights flashing outside the bar, the music is in the picture, and the picture is also "matching" the picture.
Another climax of the bar war is equally commendable.
After a long period of preparation, Sean's mother Barbara is finally going to "mutify", and everyone has a fierce confrontation around whether she should collapse her.
A conventional director has the ability to capture the tension, humor, horror, emotion of this scene.
And Edgar's genius is that he uses a [Golden Three] style confrontation to blend many feelings into one.
This is first and foremost a high-density dialogue, except for the corpse Barbara, everyone has a large number of lines, he and her accuse each other, tear each other down, revealing the truth behind the words and actions that no one knows, but in fact it is just a tacit understanding.
The tipping point was David's love for Liz, which was the source of his failure in the "showdown" with Sean.
Ed won't be on Liz's side, but he's definitely behind Sean;
Diana was supposed to be on David's side, but she "betrayed" because she no longer held back;
And Liz, who was at the center of the incident, was the only one who didn't want to stay in the center and realized that there was a greater danger, which made her human sobriety instantly turn into an escape and dodge.
When this kind of love relationship is placed in a Western-style "duel" situation, many emotional threads entwined in the whole film are all collided and discharged, and what makes everyone sober up is Barbara, who has finally become a zombie.
The most subtle of these sounds is the "zombie moaning" as a background sound.
The narrative significance of these sounds is even more important than Queen's classics.
Because it makes human emotional interactions seem ridiculous and stupid, sincere and powerless.
This is another theme that runs through the film:
The durability of humanity.
Even a big shock like the end of the world will not change.
In this scene, this invariance brings "tragedy".
And in the next stage of the bar fight, it turned into a "comedy".
In the zombie narrative, this tragedy and joy are all related to "Dead", but the attitude towards it determines whether it will eventually lead to tragedy or comedy.
Sean and Liz's way of escaping is borrowed from the classic "zombie" game "Resident Evil", and when everyone thought that only two people were fleeing, the film presented a "happy ending".
The way this ending is handled breaks the conventional "growth curve" rule.
Our Sean hasn't changed, it's Liz who has been changed.
And the "cute" Eddard, whether he is a person or a zombie, is still like me, and he has great pleasure in simple/instinctive behavior.
This kind of anti-rule is precisely the result of an in-depth understanding of the rules, and from this, a choreographer who has expressed himself has begun to see the glory.
Speaking of change, what about Sean's world?
The film once again echoes the news and reports in the prologue, and it is worth mentioning that it was not the era when mobile phones could casually distribute short videos, but how similar the human behavior in the blurred image is to today.
In the aftermath of the great apocalyptic crisis, people "quickly" found new "fun" - COLDPLAY (cameo), interviews, violent scenes, horse-catching stories......
This may be the reason why the film is still fresh after 20 years.