The World's End

At first glance, Edgar Wright's newest film The World's End seems to be a simple and predictable story of a group of friends trying to survive the night after their town has been taken over by aliens. The film however, the film is anything but simple. Edgar Wright, known for his other genre riffs Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz is known for putting insane amounts of detail into his film along will mass amounts of allusions and references. In The World's End, five friends find themselves trying to recreate a pub crawl that they failed to complete years earlier. At first the pub names seem irrelevant but a close eyed viewer would realize that the name of each pub corresponds with events that take place in said pub. Also hidden in each pub scene is the number corresponding to which number pub they are at in their crawl (the 3rd pub they visit has the number 4 hidden somewhere in the scene such as on signs or the menu. The film has massive amounts of brick jokes, ie. jokes that take a long time for the punchline to hit or finish. In one minor spoiler a character tells people a lie that his mother died only for at the very end of the film a character to mention that his mother died later on. Along with many visual nods and gags there are also lots of spoken gags. In fact in each of Edgar Wright's films save Scott Pilgrim, one character gives a short monologue that will it may not seem it at the time, gives away the entire plot of the film. I don't want to give away any spoilers but I highly recommend watching the film multiple times and listening and watching closely to everything you see on screen as it may..actually will be important later on.

Sound in Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead is a zombie movie parody starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. While the entire movie is definitely worth watching, a main staple of the film is the sound effects. Using intense and defined sound, that is typically found in action movies, for everyday activities heightens the humor of the scene. His mundane life comes with a soundtrack, muting outside noises, the viewer focuses on the loud stumbling on a curb, or listens as opening a soda can becomes an epic action. But all this is even before the dead come back to life, the climax of the movie. These dramatic sounds accompany his actions from the very beginning. Sounds like these direct the viewer to a genre or reference they are about to experience.

The movie also strongly brings music into play. Aside from using music from other classic zombie movies, director Edgar Wright incorporates it right into the action. In this scene, they are fighting off zombie in a pub, and become rhythmically intertwined with the music playing the background, fighting off zombies to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now.

Production wise, the sound is very clear. The ambient sound such as subtle music and constant zombie groans seem natural when paired with the main dialogue.