10 Movies That Relied On Deus Ex Machina
3. Shaun And Liz Are Rescued From The Zombies - Shaun Of The Dead
After an exhausting night trapped in the Winchester, David is attacked and eaten when zombies break through the wall and Dianne rushes out desperately to try and save him. Zombie Pete appears and bites Ed before being killed by Shaun. All looks bleak as they take cover in the cellar.
Ed stays behind to fend the zombies off as he has already been bitten and Shaun and Liz take the barrel lift up to the street to meet their doom... just before the army and Yvonne arrive, guns blazing, crashing their trucks through the zombies and saving them.
The hoardes of zombies surrounding them were so numerous that a deus ex machina was literally their only hope of survival (although a hilarious extra on the DVD shows that Dianne managed to save herself by climbing up a tree and eating David’s body parts until the zombies went away!) However, it required a considerable suspension of belief that the army would appear with so many armed soldiers, with such impeccable timing at this little pub in South East London!
A similar ending was used three years later in The Mist, although this was a much more bittersweet finale as the army arrived just too late to stop David mercy-killing the remaining survivors.