Shaun of the Dead (2004) Script Review | #77 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
How Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg brought the zombie apocalypse to London, delivering a funny, sweet, and distinctively British take on the undead genre.
Logline: Shaun lives a supremely uneventful life, which revolves around his girlfriend, his mother, and, above all, his local pub. But this gentle routine is threatened when the dead return to life and make strenuous attempts to snack on ordinary Londoners.
Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Pages: 131
Shaun of the Dead deserves its spot on the WGA’s 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century for its catchy title alone. That it’s also a playful riff on George Romero’s seminal Dead franchise, particularly Dawn of the Dead (Shaun, Dawn), a biting (pun!) horror comedy fueled by a love for cinema and pop culture courtesy of both Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Perhaps the screed of writing should be changed from, “Write what you know” to “Write what you love.”
Come for the zombies, stay for the drama and woe of the titular character, because Wright and Pegg grasp what few understand about the appeal of zombie stories: The dead aren’t that interesting; it’s the living trying to avoid joining them that’s entertaining.
Since Romero gave us Night of the Living Dead in 1968, the majority of zombie stories on the big screen tended to be of the American flavor. By transporting hordes of the undead to a quiet section of London, Shaun of the Dead automatically sets itself apart with its English sensibility. Instead of a baseball bat wielded as a weapon, we get a cricket bat; instead of panicking and screaming, the characters tend to react to the situation with a deadpan understatement; and since guns aren’t readily available in London as in America, the characters only get access to one towards the climax. Even with those three variations, the screenplay suddenly feels different from what we’re used to expecting.
But even those small differences can’t sustain an entire screenplay, which is why we get the story of the unlikely reluctant hero, Shaun, and the other players:
Liz – Shaun’s (ex)girlfriend
Ed – Shaun’s childhood friend and flatmate – “in his late twenties and slightly overweight”
David – Liz’s flatmate, Dianne’s boyfriend, still harbors an unrequited love for Liz – “trendy but strait-laced”
Dianne – Liz’s flatmate, David’s girlfriend, a failed actress – “colourful and chirpy”
Barbara – Shaun’s mother
Philip – Shaun’s stepfather, Barbara’s husband – “a greying bear of a man”
Pete – Shaun’s college friend and flatmate
Yvonne – Shaun’s friend
Unlike in most zombie stories, Wright and Pegg don’t bring in the undead until Act II, somewhere around page 39— instead, they plant the seeds and tension for the coming apocalypse through clever hints of newspaper headlines, reports, and other strange incidents; and only then does it hit zombie survival mode.
It’s also worth mentioning that the screenplay NEVER offers an explanation for the cause of the zombie outbreak. There are indications that it could be extraterrestrial, but since our characters aren’t scientists and in the loop, the origins stay obscure. And that’s fine. Not everything needs to be explained, nor is that the interesting part of the story.
As a result, all of Act I revolves around Shaun promising Liz that he will book a dinner at a nice restaurant for their anniversary instead of doing the same thing that they always do (go for drinks at The Winchester pub) … and failing to do so. We discover that Shaun is passive— things happen to him rather than the result of his taking direct action, and both Liz and Pete blame Ed for holding Shaun back (well, Pete mostly; Liz doesn’t really come out with how she truly feels about Ed). The screenplay thus builds the stakes around the fate of two primary relationships: Shaun’s friendship with Ed, and Shaun’s relationship with Liz.
The plot also remains bare-bones and simple: Shaun must rescue his mother (and to his reluctance, his stepfather), collect Liz (and to his reluctance, David and Dianne), and together with Ed, they’re going to hide at The Winchester until things die down. That’s it! Simplicity truly makes for a great screenplay, so let’s take a look at how it breaks down here:
Act I – Shaun promises to do something special for Liz but forgets, causing Liz to break up with him.
Act II – After fending off a zombie attack in their garden, Shaun and Ed decide to hide out at The Winchester, so they go around collecting Barbara, Philip, Liz, David and Diane while trying not to get killed. But although they succeed in getting inside the pub, Barbara dies from an infected bite and zombies have surrounded the pub.
Act III – Armed with only one rifle and any makeshift weapons they can lay their hands on, Shaun, Ed, and Liz fight the undead but only Shaun and Liz are able to make it out alive until the British Military arrives. Six months later, life has returned to a new semblance of normal… or has it? (Because Shaun keeps an undead Ed in the shed, implying that he cannot let go of his attachment to his friend).
Shaun of the Dead doesn’t win points for having anything profound to say, unlike Romero did with his Dead movies; where it does win points is in its wit, style, and clever mix of pop culture and references. For example, although it’s not obvious in the script, when Shaun wraps his work tie around his forehead, the image is meant to be a reference to Robert De Niro’s character from The Deer Hunter. There is also a reference to Resident Evil that is, well, self-explanatory. And it uses Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ for the climax when Shaun and company defend themselves inside the Winchester.
It does, however, have a little bit of an Oedipal plot in the mix courtesy of Shaun’s relationship with his stepfather, Philip, and his inability to grow up; Shaun being forced to kill his mother signals a shift that Barbara cannot follow Shaun into his new phase of life. And yet, in the end, it seems Liz has taken over the mother role, doting on Shaun while he still clings to a vestige of the past. In his book, Nerd Do Well, Simon Pegg admitted as much:
“We always intended an ambiguity at the end of the film regarding whether or not Liz knows about Ed. If she does, she is complicit in Shaun’s failure to evolve and as such is as reactionary as he is. If she doesn’t, then Shaun’s transformation from zero to hero has meant nothing, as he continues to cling on to his past by hanging out with his zombie friend. Also, there are numerous unintentional processes at work here, not least our fantasy female’s ultimate acceptance of Shaun despite his being a bit of an idiot. Deep down, we all hope to be accepted despite our shortcomings and Edgar and I were effectively building an all-new bride of Frankenstein in Liz, a gestalt entity fashioned to satisfy both of our subconscious desires. We tried very hard to make Liz believable and have her protests be justified and not just needy and boring, but ultimately she is still a male fantasy: a beautiful girlfriend prepared to look past failings in the face of one’s romantic gesture, maybe not a bunch of flowers but certainly extreme courage in the face of a zombie apocalypse (chicks love that shit)… By the end of the film, it is clear that Shaun hasn’t really been changed that much by his recent experiences, and although he has won the day by beating amazing odds, the fact that he remains unable to let go of his now literally toxic best friend hints that the final idyll will be short-lived. Or then again, maybe it’s just a film about zombies…”
On top of all that, it wins the prize for taking the concept of Chekhov’s gun of planting ideas and paying them off in delightfully absurd ways, pushing it to the absolute limit that only becomes apparent in hindsight:
The game scene on Page 9 is mirrored on Page 108.
On Page 35, Pete yells at Ed to live in the shed if he wants to be an animal; by the end of the screenplay, an undead Ed is living in the shed.
Page 35 
Page 132 On Page 36, Ed mutters that the next time he sees Pete, he’s dead; the next time Ed sees Pete, the latter is very much so (and Pete ends up biting Ed on Page 120, almost as if in revenge).
It’s these little touches that make re-reads (and subsequently, repeat viewings of the finished film) rewarding. Not to mention that it took me a long time to pick up on the fact that Wright and Pegg named Shaun’s mother Barbara simply to pay homage to the iconic line from Night of the Living Dead.
The most instructive part of reading a Wright and Pegg screenplay is to see how they write the montages that have become a trademark in any Edgar Wright movie (especially The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy). Are they detailed to a tee? Does it consist of a list of lines? Is it instructive in its camera directions?
Nope. Here is how they write their montages— simple, uncomplicated, and only using ‘…’ to indicate a transition.
Compare this with how detailed the finished result is:
Barring perhaps The World’s End, the pre-title scene in Shaun of the Dead offers a fascinating case study in how to set up your characters, conflict, location and tone in a screenplay. In a mere 5.5 pages, Wright and Pegg quickly assemble the pieces on the board and gives us everything we need to know about the characters, the tone, and why we should keep reading until the end.
Location: The Winchester (where they will hole up)
Conflict: Liz is frustrated with their relationship and wants Shaun to step up (he does)
Characters: Shaun, Liz, Ed, David, and Dianne are all present here— and we understand their personalities and feelings towards each other, especially why Ed is a bad influence on Shaun
Style: Whip-smart dialogue with great timing
As a writing exercise, I suggest trying to write an opening scene that distills your ideas, characters, and conflict into less than six pages and see if you can capture it all in that time.
Shaun of the Dead would form the first part of an unlikely trilogy that became known as The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, named after a different flavor of Cornetto ice-cream that appears in the story. Pegg and Wright would follow up their zombie outing with a riff on cop films (Hot Fuzz) and science-fiction (The World’s End). But this was the one that kicked it off first. Offering an alternative to the American-dominated zombie flick, Shaun of the Dead proves that transporting a familiar genre to an unknown setting can automatically open up your screenplay to new possibilities and direction. Of all the scripts they’ve written together, this is the one that feels like Wright and Pegg’s true labor of love, a stew of all the things that interest them combined with a clever premise. Even after two decades, the screenplay has not lost its bite one bit. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?
Notes:
Pegg, Simon - Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy's Journey to Becoming a Big Kid (2009)