News You Can Bruise for 2005 April 9 (entry 1)

(5) Sat Apr 09 2005 23:43 PST Shaun of the Dead: Sumana rented it and we watched it tonight. It was really good, but in an amazing twist of fate the movie was ruined for me by false spoilers! Somehow while hearing about the movie (or, perhaps, seeing the name of the movie) I got the impression that halfway through, the main character got killed and came back as a zombie, but nonetheless they managed to pull it off as a romantic comedy. I thought this was so awesome that I kept wondering how they would manage it, and once it became clear that 1) it was not going to happen, and 2) the nature of zombiehood in this movie was such that it couldn't happen, it was a big disappointment. Still the best zombie movie I've ever seen.

Comments:

Posted by Riana at Sun Apr 10 2005 04:03

The makers call the genre "ZoRoCo": zombie romantic comedy.

You have to see it again so that you'll be certain to catch all the bits that recur later in the movie with more ominous meaning (e.g. "You've got red on you").

Posted by Kristofer Straub at Sun Apr 10 2005 17:04

False spoilers occurred to me while playing the game Clive Barker's Undying, a horror FPS. You're this post-WWI Irish skeptic called to help out a wealthy dying friend in his mansion, to discover some awful curse that is plaguing his family.

About halfway through the game, very strongly encouraged by hints in the storyline (and a whole cutscene that seemed to bear it out!) I believed that the "Undying King" was an evil wizard who made himself immortal in order to rule some country forever. And the only way to stop him was for the peasants to revolt and bury him alive, where he remained for 800 years, being driven more and more insane and perhaps his body strangely intertwining with the roots and the dirt around him. And I assumed I would have to confront this hideous magician-king at the end.

But, the end of the game was a big monster from hell that had nothing to do with anything from the backstory, very standard stuff. The "king" business was a nickname, and the details were just for atmosphere or something. Really disappointing. I have a feeling the developers told Barker "this... king stuff is okay, but players will just want to fight a big monster."

Posted by Brian at Sun Apr 10 2005 22:01

Is it possible that you had another film in mind (w/re to the spoiler that wasn't)? If memory serves, "My Boyfriend's Back" featured a guy who loved a particular girl so much that he came back from the dead for her, though I don't think that they actually began dating until after his zombie-fication (despite the title) :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107626/

Posted by Leonard at Sun Apr 10 2005 23:33

No, it was definitely Shaun of the Dead. Perhaps I was inclined to believe it because it could have been the movie I've wanted to see for a long time, where the main character gets killed right in the middle.

Posted by Kevan at Tue Apr 12 2005 16:36

Hm, I was expecting exactly the same thing; someone had mentioned the "post-zombie London" at the end, and I'd assumed that the title of the film alluded to Shaun deciding to adapt to the inevitable (and, if you ask me, benign and peaceful and unpolluted) civilisation of the zombie, with or without a pulse.

This was one of many lazy reasons why I gave up on the novel I was trying to write with exactly this basic plot. (Someone else might have written it since, as an online book, but I've not had time to read it yet. Opening few pages seem quite beautiful, though.)