“Hold on. These guys are so British, I’m going to need close captioning.”

That’s what my almost 16-year-old said as we started Shaun of the Dead, the third movie in the Spooky Season Cinema Erin at Still Life With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing for the next couple of months.

This is a comedy-horror movie about a zombie apocalypse and a small group of people trying to survive it.

And yes, it’s a British movie, hence the need for subtitles for us.

The movie stars Simon Pegg (who plays Scotty in the new reiteration of the Star Trek movies) and Nick Frost and was written by Pegg and Edgar Wright, who also directed the film.

I think I am at a bit of a disadvantage at this weekly feature we are doing, honestly, because I’m either watching these movies for the first time or for the first time in several years like I was with Shaun of the Dead.

I am not a zombie movie watcher, even when it is a comedy, so obviously, I was talked into watching it by my husband who loves this movie and the other two that followed it, though they are not sequels to each other. The other movies, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End are written and directed by the same people and star the two man actors, but are not linked otherwise.

The Husband wanted to watch this with us but then we realized we had nowhere to shuffle Little Miss off to and she stays up later than most kids, so in the end The Boy and I watched it together and we decided The Husband and The Boy can watch Hot Fuzz and The World’s End together. I don’t mind missing those two. Really. I don’t.

This movie is what I call smart comedy.

It’s a comedy but it’s subtle in many ways because of how brilliantly it is written.

If you are looking for a fun movie, this is for you. If you are looking for a fun, clean movie, then this is not for you. It is rated R. Not to be a prude, but just warning anyone who isn’t keen on rated R movies. I didn’t count how many “f” words were said but it was a lot and that was only in the first fifteen minutes.

I consider the movie genius in many ways, even if it did have me squirming at times.

I told Erin I thought the movie was genius and she said, “Is it?”

*snort* Oh, Erin, she cracks me up.

Of course, we know going into this movie that it is going to deal with zombies but instead of rushing right into it, they simply keep hinting at disaster on the horizon with scenes in the background of news reports, people falling over, and heads falling in directions they shouldn’t be falling.

As we started watching this, there was one hilarious sequence I remembered even after not seeing the movie for almost 17 years. The scene is the definition of self-absorbed and clueless. It’s when everything kicks off and the action really gets started and it never slows down from there.

It’s a very emotional film in many ways, so it isn’t all comedy. It pulls no punches, and no one is safe so don’t get too attached to anyone. It is also extremely gruesome, which means my son loved it. He was blown away by the violence and I became such a mom and kept telling him to look away. It was sort of hilarious how I was trying to protect “my little boy” who is going to be 16 in another month.

Up next on our Spooky Season Cinema:

Hocus Pocus

Young Frankenstein

Transylvania 6500

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Classic Creature Feature)

Legend of Sleepy Hollow 

And …. If I can take it… to end the series: Halloween from 1979.