Summary
Shed of the Dead is a fun zombie comedy that brings all the gardening tools to play with.
Shed of the Dead follows a professional slacker, Trevor (Brown), who spends his time hiding in his allotment shed, painting figurines for his wargames with his best friend Graham (MacIntosh). He is between jobs as his wife Bobbi (Socha) works in a hairdresser’s with Harriet (Booth), who both the guys have a crush on. Having another one of his slacker days, Trevor doesn’t notice the zombie apocalypse happen until it is too late and must work with Graham to save his wife.
Shed of the Dead subscribes to the modern storytelling of most zombie movies: think of a new location that hasn’t been the focal point before and use it as the central location for the story. We get a character in Trevor that needs to start taking responsibility in his life before it is too late and he loses everything because he is stuck in a fantasy world. If we look much deeper into the story, we won’t find anything new, since this does use the zombie movie checklist way too often. The story does tend to go towards the mentality of sexual fantasy when the world is ending; it would have been fine if it was used once, but we head down this path whenever we seem to get a blank moment.
Shed of the Dead does use the British talent for the comedy in the film, with Spencer Brown, Lauren Socha, Ewen MacIntosh and Emily Booth involved the most; they get to perform in more scenes than the icons who do end up feeling more like overlong cameos, sadly, though they do all get a strong moment to stand out.
Shed of the Dead is a horror comedy that gets to use plenty of zombie references that will get body horror parts of the genre right without re-inventing it. One of the biggest highlights is the lollypop person in the full school crossing outfit in zombie form. The comedy in the film is used to see the over the top reactions to the gore of the geekily portrayed characters, while enjoying it secretly. We do get bickering, which is mostly funny, and the fantasies the men create give us moments that only get more laughs. The film should have targeted using the single setting more though, pushing the idea that everything is revolving around the shed, but we do spend too much time away from this location which disappoints when it comes to creating a film with a sole location, as indicated by the title.
Overall Shed of the Dead is a fun zombie comedy horror; it gets the laughs required and has the zombie action and the gore, even if it does keep everything within the checklist of the zombie genre.
