It's a great mixture that grabs your attention. The movie also establishes a couple of relationships early on that it makes you willing to care about and invest yourself in even as the story quickly shifts gears and brings in the zombies, without any real explanation. In a way, this is a very manic movie, but it works beautifully.

There are moments that are funny and ridiculous, like the scene with the records or Shaun's first encounter with the zombies in which he doesn't even realize they exist. That was both funny and wonderfully choreographed. Also fun is the scene in Shaun's backyard in which he and his friend Ed first take notice of a zombie. Finally, the ultimate fate for some of the zombies is quite a brilliant touch, eliciting some emphatic laughs from me.

Yet, the movie does not shy away from being serious, even if there is always comedy lurking just under the surface. Once the principle characters are hiding out in the Winchester, the movie takes some dark turns that really add to the story, as far as I'm concerned. There are strong emotions in the scene that work very well, even though I still felt as though I was watching a comedy. But suddenly, with such horrible circumstances, I was really caring about the characters, wishing they weren't in such a terrible predicament. The scene then becomes particularly effective in a flurry of death, but then reasserts the comedy when a particularly gruesome death is immediately followed by a ridiculous and hilarious visual gag. The movie doesn't walk a genre tightrope; it just flips it off and continues on its way.

It works perfectly. Comedy, horror, treatise on the unmotivated--Shaun of the Dead is effective on many different levels but never forgets to be, first and foremost, an entertaining movie. It's well worth seeing.