Shed of the Dead promises to be a fun knockabout horror comedy, but just doesn't have the axe chops. The plot is positively shambling and the 'domestic comedy' is laboured (and mainly pretty awful). Indeed, some of the dialogue routines are painful, with flat, tonally out of sync deadpan verbal interplays and bickering between Trevor and Bobbi that are simply unfunny (with the writer assuming that Bobbi swearing a lot stands as a fine substitute for wit and well-conceived jokes). Aside from the obvious Shaun of the Deadisms, Cockneys vs. Zombies also got there first, and is also a much better film. A horror-comedy needs a good sense of pacing, and the numerous D&D fantasy sequences in Shed of the Dead just serve to slow everything down, and while I appreciate budget constraints, a narrative concerned with the fall of a major city to a zombie horde probably should feature more than 10 zombies. Also, the film adds nothing to zombie lore: the dead reanimate (for some reason), attack and consume the living, and their bite causes victims to turn into the voracious undead. It would be nice to see some variation on the theme, like zombies just wanting to play badminton, darts, or watch Strictly Come Dancing, and only becoming enraged when denied these desires. But, the film does have a setpiece scene that sees a character (The Office's Keith, no less!) fending off a zombie while Trevor scours the house for a pair of trousers before he can help. I'm sure it looked a riot on paper, and Brian Rix would probably have approved. Still, Emily Booth is good (with the zombie sex scene actually being somewhat amusing) and it is cool to see Kane Hodder, Michael Berryman and William Moseley lurking in UK horror antics (not forgetting the stentorian tones of Brian Blessed), but the film is mainly an ordeal.
Review of Shed of the Dead
