For my screenwriting class, I needed to analyze the first 10 minutes of a movie. I was going to go with something traditional, like say When Harry Met Sally, which has a well-known solid beginning, but after a friend suggested it, perhaps jokingly, my brain kept returning to Shaun of the Dead—a perhaps lesser known movie but one that I love. As a zombie flick, it technically falls in the genres of Horror (though, while violent, it’s honestly not a bit scary) and Comedy. At its core, it’s a love story and quite a hilarious one at that. Not your traditional RomCom, it’s more of a Zom-Rom-Com.

Shaun of the Dead is a great movie from start to finish and all of the promises which the movie sets out to fulfill are set up perfectly in its first 10 minutes. What makes the beginning…