Remember what a levity-laden time 2004 really was? Sure, there was the usual contempt for Republicans and their latest “faux cause” (paying Afghanistan back for the WTC by, for some reason, invading Iraq), but all in all, it was a fun-loving time throughout the world, made all the more manifest by the release of a British (back when they weren’t such tits) movie called none other than Shaun of the Dead. Having established his writing and acting (in a conjunctive method) knack on the two-season series, Spaced, back in 1999, it didn’t take Simon Pegg long to deliver the Edgar Wright-directed Shaun five years later. At a time when the rise of technology and screen-dependent existence was still relatively germinal, Pegg had already caught onto the fact that it was turning everyone into even more intensified glassy-eyed drones (and after TV already got to people in the 50s and beyond, too!). Enough so that it gave him the seed of an idea for an entire movie plot, one centered on the tag line: “Ever felt like you were surrounded by zombies?”
In point of fact, the introduction to the movie commences with a sequence of Brits blankly checking out grocery items, waiting en masse for a bus to come with their heads glued to their (very analog) phones or simply lumbering through the streets in a dazed confusion (mainly the requisite hoodie’d youth of London). This before Shaun Riley (Pegg) himself stumbles in a zombie-like haze out of his own room to join his longtime best mate, Ed (Nick Frost), for a quick session of mindless video game playing before Ed reminds him he has to go to work. Ed, naturally, does not–something that vexes Shaun’s real (read: paying) roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), to no end. In his usual irritable manner, he asks Ed if he could at least clean up a bit and take down their messages instead of just his own. Ed nods along as Shaun is forced to go off to his middling job as a “senior” sales associate at an electronics store.
This isn’t the only aspect of his life that feels middling, at least according to his increasingly irritated girlfriend of three years, Liz (Kate Ashfield), who points out one of his major shortcomings to him the night before. That shortcoming being: his (way too) comfortableness with stagnation. Case in point, coming to the same pub–The Winchester–every night and, to boot, always bringing Ed, which, in turn, “exacerbates” the situation because Liz then ends up deciding to bring her own flatmates, Dianne (Lucy Davis), and her boyfriend, David (Dylan Moran), the latter of whom Shaun especially can’t stand. And with all these “group hangs,” there’s rarely much intimate alone time to be had between Liz and Shaun–which is precisely why Liz warningly tells him that they ought to engage in more solo activities with one another. Shaun, still entranced by ostensibly nothing, absently agrees to go along with whatever Liz wants, swearing they’ll go to a nice restaurant the following evening.
Of course, the following morning, he’s too hungover and grudgingly concerned with getting to work on time to remember, walking out the door just as Liz leaves a message reminding him to make the reservation. Looming in the background of it all are news reports that become more and more insidious, yet that Shaun, in his inherent state of human oblivion, almost willfully ignores, going about his usual business without paying any attention. The reports even come on at his workplace, as he flips through channels to show the cable packages available to a customer, but Shaun then gets caught up in the arrival of his surly stepfather, Philip (Bill Nighy), making sure his “forgetful” (a.k.a. deadbeat) stepson can get it together long enough to remember to bring his mother, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), some proper flowers.
With such a task to remember, Shaun’s general absent-mindedness gets the better of him and he loses track of his other important task: making sure to take Liz out to a proper restaurant. His cock-up inevitably leads to him trying Liz’s patience one too many times, and the breakup sends him once more to his trusty Winchester, where Ed consoles him, insisting, “I’m not gonna say, ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea,’ ‘If you love her, let her go.’ I’m not gonna bombard you with cliches. All I’m gonna say is: ‘It’s not the end of the world.’” At that moment, the ominous shadow of one of the undead tries to knock on the door. The pub owner, John (Steve Emerson), yells out that they’re closed, and the creature trudges away, leaving Shaun to balk, “Pisshead.” When, of course, the zombie’s head is filled with nothing at all, least of all piss.
In the morning, after an awkward fight with Pete in the “dead” of the night over blasting their music too loudly, Shaun (and, naturally, Ed) still has yet to catch on that everything has gone tits up, despite mounting evidence of the zombie apocalypse around him as he pops round to the shop for a Coke and to get Ed a Cornetto (there’s a reason this movie is part of the Cornetto Trilogy). In so many ways, it reminds one of watching the slow-to-process reactions around the globe of actually acknowledging and dealing with coronavirus’ escalation in cases. And, in some sense, the way so many were watching it all unfold in China as though it was their problem–like it couldn’t possibly spread elsewhere. Alas, people can’t seem to put it together that they’re fucked until the situation is very literally in their own backyard (as is the case when a zombie girl appears in Shaun’s garden). All the while, the reports have stated, “Although it’s been hard to establish how this could have happened on such a wide scale and so rapidly, environmental health officials have refused to confirm that the phenomenon is the result of a virus.” Until they do, without needing to say anything at all.
By then, of course, it’s too late. All you can do is reduce yourself to the carnal survivalist mode of prehistoric man, just trying to get by without dying. As Shaun does by deciding to defy the newscaster’s instruction, “The Home Office is asking people to stay in their houses. Ensure your residences are secure with all windows and doors firmly locked.” An advisal that feels all too resonant at the moment, with just about every European country on lockdown (with the UK’s own being imminent). Shaun, instead, decides to get Liz back by showing his gallantry in coming to get her after picking up his mom and saving her from the newly bitten Philip.
Maybe the coronavirus isn’t (yet) the zombie apocalypse portrayed in Shaun of the Dead, but the orders from authorities and officials on how to deal with it are eerily similar. As the newscaster puts it, “To recap, it is vital that you stay in your homes; make no attempt to reach loved ones and avoid all physical contact with the assailants.” The assailants, in this case, being anyone that has been infected. The same way the humans who became zombies were. For to become a zombie–an untouchable–a virus must be transferred through an endless chain of spreading. It’s the spread that leads to the unstoppable chaos we’re presently seeing unfold in real time. At one point, as Ed is driving Philip’s Jag recklessly in a botched attempt to get to The Winchester, a radio DJ describes the entire affair as “evidence of a coming apocalypse.” And indeed, anytime a way of life ends on a catastrophic scale such as this, it is an apocalypse. As for the many jobs that have been (and will remain) lost as a result of the novel c-virus, well, maybe the same fate will occur as it does at the end of Shaun, with a reporter remarking, “Of course the fact that the mobile deceased still have primal instincts and trace cognitive thought make them ideal recruitment for the service industry.” Who they will be serving when no one has any money to spend on such frivolities, however, is unclear.
