Even in 2004, the zombie genre was played out. Now, ten season into The Walking Dead, zombies are so over done that it's hard to stand out. Shaun of the Dead is an incredibly fresh take one the genre. It's not really a parody but more of a comedy that just happens to take place during a zombie outbreak. While I did find the movie incredibly clever, I rarely found it funny. I loved all the characters and there is plenty of wordplay and a few smart dialog sequences, but they don't seem to try comedy that often. I love British humor, but there isn't even much of that. The plot is pretty standard, except for Simon Pegg's character (the titular Shaun). Shaun spends almost a third of the movie totally oblivious to what's going on and a good portion of the funny scenes happen because he has no idea that his neighbors are zombies. Shaun of the Dead does a lot of things right: I love the soundtrack, the plot is very well paced, Edgar Wright's direction gets us some great shots, the characters were all well written, the dialog feels real, and the ending was well done. Really, my only issue is that for a comedy, there isn't much comedy. When they go for it, the humor works, but they just don't try enough. I'll gladly take a comedy that is funny when it tries to be, but doesn't try very often over a comedy movie that constantly tries to be funny but rarely is. Looking at Edgar Wright's filmography, this is easily the best of his films that I've watched (I hated Ant-Man, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver), but I'm intrigued enough to check out the rest of the Cornetto trilogy.