Review of Shaun of the Dead (2004)
London, Z-Day: A wimp and a deadbeat realize at a very late stage what is happening around them. Their attempt to save the people they can is frequently put on hold for sitting down in sofas.
Mostly coming-of-age with a bit of romance and a few walking dead. As the title implies, it operates on Romero principles—just not permanently—and parodies the zombie genre heavily, in a more focused way than films like Bio-Zombie (1998) or Wild Zero (1999).
Like all good zombie parodies, it gets serious occasionally, inserting the harsh conflicts of empathy and living disembowelment of Dawn of the Dead (1978) in a very English put-the-kettle-on environment. It takes its premise of ordinary protagonists to extremes: Nobody is remotely accurate with any kind of ranged weapon. Thank the Queen for cricket bats and the heinous motor skills of the undead.
References here: Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009), The World’s End (2013), Story of Science Fiction (2018).