Ludicrous Invasions

Shaun of the Dead
directed by Edgar Wright
written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
starring:  Simon Pegg , Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost , Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton

The Forgotten
directed by Joseph Ruben
written by Gerald Di Pego
starring:  Julianne Moore, Anthony Edwards, Gary Sinise, Dominic West, Alfre Woodard

       Shaun of the Dead is a double-edged success, a comedy within a genre film and vice versa. The movie is great fun either way but its brilliance comes about through the latter, being foremost a romantic comedy that utilizes zombies for appropriately satiric motives.
       Plenty of zombie movies, including those with antagonists influenced by if not quite definitively the living dead, employ the creatures for purposes of social or biological commentary but unlike much of the genre’s adherents, the plot of Shaun of the Dead is not propelled by their appearance. The onslaught, occurring well enough into the narrative to almost forget anticipation for it, becomes a significant incitement and obstacle for a reconciliation storyline between Shaun (Pegg) and Liz (Ashfield).
       The couple’s problems stem from Shaun’s predictable indolence. He can barely go to his dead-end job selling electronics without a quick video game play and can’t go home until he’s had a few pints at the local pub. Providing highly damaging influence is his best friend Ed (Frost), who has so few responsibilities as to fill his day with only these simple pleasures of entertainment and alcohol. So, when the relationship fails, laggardness prevails.
        Then the zombies show up. Representative of his predatory opposition and reflective caricature as much as a literal threat to Liz’s life, they bring out a suppressed vigor in Shaun. With Ed, he gathers a small band of survivors including his mum (Wilton) and step-dad (Nighy) for added Freudian hurdles. As they attempt to hide out in a pub, the group eventually decreases in number with each loss of life a discarded weight off the couple’s future together.
        The deaths are plenty gory too for those not interested in the layered love story. One character’s guts are pulled out while he watches in disbelief before being completely ripped into pieces. Most of the violence, though, is humorously limited to believably awkward triumphs over the creatures. Shaun wields a cricket bat and then a shotgun, neither of which he exhibits proficiency with. Liz’s roommate Dianne (Davis) tries to fight off some zombies by throwing darts and accidentally pitches one into Shaun’s head. Plenty of these sorts of gags do less to poke fun at the zombie genre than to make more sense of them. Good parody supplies correction instead of merely pointing out flaws and exaggerating familiar scenes for timely, therefore dated, humor.
        Shaun of the Dead could have just been a funny zombie movie, or just a cheap spoof, but it would be reiterating much of what we’ve seen in past variations like the original Dawn of the Dead or any of the humor-laced horror of Raimi, Jackson, Troma, etc. Instead it works additionally as the best metaphoric treatise on breaking up since this year’s Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.

         With the potential had to either seriously tackle the subject of paramnesia or ridicule the absurdity of paranoid conspiracy thrillers, The Forgotten somehow got the two ideas backwards, almost explaining away the former affliction with an optimistic comfort in the latter.
           Julianne Moore’s choice to play Telly, a woman attempting to move on after her only son is killed in a plane crash, could be one of the worst career backtracks in memory. Her anxious, melodramatic hysteria works for the film but the film doesn’t work for anything, let alone her typecast talent. Her character goes from grieving mother to delusional psychotic to hopeful investigator so quickly within the first act as to be inaccessible. It might have served as some skeptical handling by director Joseph Ruben, but with such a risibly ineffective climax and an ending that may as well have Telly waking from a bad dream, the plot she suspects is never convincing anyway.
            The script by Gerald Di Pego is somewhere between the worst "X-Files" episode and a blunderingly backwards Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind on the subject of mother-child mourning. There are so many inconsistencies and nonsensical developments that it’s a good question whether anyone actually read the thing all the way through. 

Expectation Key


there's no possible way we will even see this

we'll eventually see this but we aren't really expecting much

anticipating the release of this one but we're sure to be left unsatisfied

such high expectation of this film only leaves room for disappointment