Every Edgar Wright Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

3. Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead Simon Pegg Nick Frost
Universal Pictures

Though A Fistful Of Fingers was well-received by those who saw it (there are a handful of positive reviews on IMDB), Shaun Of The Dead is the movie that put Edgar Wright on the map.

A rom-zom-com following the exploits of Shaun, an aimless electronics salesman who - like the zombies he will soon encounter - is just plodding through life, one of the most impressive things about Shaun Of The Dead is just how well it blends together numerous genres and styles.

It can be viewed as a comedy, or a buddy-comedy; it works well as a parody, containing references to numerous zombie movies from the 70s to the early 00s; fans of horror and gore will also receive their fix, since Wright does not hold back with the fake blood; and there's also a simple love story at its core, which acts as the emotional glue of the entire film, neatly pulling the drawstrings together by the story's end.

The movie does feel a little less-impressive than the rest of the Cornetto trilogy due to the simple fact that it had a smaller budget and reduced scale, but that's not Wright's fault; of course he wouldn't be given a ton of money for his first studio outing.

But also unlike the rest of the Cornetto trilogy is the fact that here, Pegg's character feels like an actual person, not a cinematically exaggerated work of fiction. Shaun is an everyday guy who's easy to root for, and this more grounded feel makes all the zany humour seem that much funnier in contrast.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!