It also stars Nick Frost in his film debut, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, and Penelope Wilton.

In the Crouch End area of London, 29-year-old electronics salesman Shaun is disrespected by his colleagues, does not get along with his stepfather Philip, and is dumped by his girlfriend Liz after he promises to improve himself but is unsuccessful in making decent plans for an anniversary date.

As the group takes refuge inside the Winchester, Shaun discovers that the zombies followed him, and Ed inadvertently attracts them by playing on the pub's slot machine.

Upon discovering a small lift for kegs that opens onto the street, Shaun and Liz exit the pub while Ed buys them time by staying behind with the rifle.

One evening, I was round at Simon [Pegg] and his pal Nick Frost's flat for drinks when I said we should make our own zombie movie, a horror comedy.

Despite this, Wright was still invested in the production and refused to take other television directing jobs until Shaun of the Dead was made, which left him in some debt for a while.

[5] He began developing it in earnest after playing Resident Evil one late night himself and then going out in the early morning hours, wondering what a British person's reaction to a zombie apocalypse would be.

He considered the lack of firearms typical of American zombie movies, and his experience of the dazed early morning walk to the shop turned into a scene in the film where Shaun does the same thing.

[5] Another influence from Wright's life came from how he missed the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic by simply not having paid attention to the news for a fortnight and turning his television on one day to see cattle being burnt, which left him confused.

[20] Shaun's stepfather Philip is played by Bill Nighy, who accepted the role after Wright sent him an early script of the film to read.

[9] Bobby Olivier of Billboard attributes the initial rebirth of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" to its appearance in the film, which "introduced it to a new generation of listeners", saying: "Perhaps the most famous scene from Shaun of the Dead features "Don't Stop Me Now" which blares from a pub jukebox while stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Kate Ashfield bash a zombie with pool cues to the song's hurtling beat".

[9] In 2005, IDW Publishing released a four-issue adaptation written by Chris Ryall (with input from Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg) and drawn by Zack Howard.

[49] Pegg and Frost reprised their roles as Shaun and Ed for a public service announcement video, The Plan, which was released on 19 March 2020 on YouTube.

In the video, Shaun and Ed share advice about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with the former urging the latter to follow National Health Service guidelines, stay home and avoid the pub.

[54] Other zombie film references include one to 28 Days Later, made during the ending scene when Shaun and Liz are watching television and a news report mentions the idea of "raging infected monkeys" – in 28 Days Later the rage virus was started by monkeys in a laboratory[56] – and another to Italian gore director Lucio Fulci with the restaurant called "Fulci's".

[7] Wright and Pegg had contacted various artists to ask for the use of their records in the famed scene where Shaun and Ed throw LPs at a zombie to defend themselves.

It was on an original list of songs for the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel, and Wright joked that "he owed Sade some publishing money" after destroying the album in Shaun of the Dead.

[58] Of the moment, Pegg said that they "love using Sade as a weapon", noting that she was one of only two artists who gave permission to show cover art in the scene (the other being New Order).

It began trending on Twitter because the film's poster, which showed zombies pressed up against door windows, bears a striking resemblance to a photojournalist's image of protesters in Ohio at the Statehouse demanding lockdown be lifted.

[64] He finds that the subgenre of zombie films "can shock and terrify a population that has become numb to other horror subgenres",[64] with Dendle similarly assessing that "the possibility of wide-scale destruction and devastation which 9/11 brought once again into the communal consciousness found a ready narrative expression in the zombie apocalypses which over thirty years had honed images of desperation subsistence and amoral survivalism to a fine edge".

[72] Beyond film studies, a Bayesian mathematical model using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods was performed on examples of epidemic progression by Caitlyn Witkowski and Brian Blais in 2013.

The website's consensus reads: "Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit.

[79] Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans".

[80] Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed [and] nicely acted".

[80] Like Pierce, Ide felt that there is "a convincing emotional depth" despite the comedy; she similarly noted that the second half was slower but chalked this up to being darker in tone at the climax.

Club enjoyed the record-throwing scene, citing it as an example of where the film "doesn't mind putting in extra work for its laughs", as it comes off funnier with Shaun and Ed debating which records they sacrifice rather than throwing indiscriminately.

Ebert wrote that he was "by now more or less exhausted by the cinematic possibilities of killing [zombies]", and so he was glad for what Shaun of the Dead brought to the table outside of this, writing that "instead of focusing on the Undead and trying to get the laughs there, it treats the living characters as sitcom regulars whose conflicts and arguments keep getting interrupted by annoying flesh-eaters".

[76] Elder agreed that by its release the zombie film had "ambled its course", but thought that "Shaun of the Dead stands on its own, a romantic comedy crossed with a quarter-life crisis drama–just played against a background horde of brain-hungry, decomposing undead".

[77] Peter Travers also gave the film three out of four stars and praised Pegg: "[he] makes you root for Shaun, even when he’s slacking with Ed [...], neglecting Liz and battling with his mum".

[51][95] Pegg and Frost also reprised their roles (in animation) as Shaun and Ed in the Phineas and Ferb Halloween special "Night of the Living Pharmacists" in October 2014.