Zombies are back to their old, shambling ways in "Shaun of the Dead," a gleefully over-the-top parody of the zombie movie genre that does for brain-eating hordes what "Scream" once did for teen slasher flicks.

Rejecting the recent trend of nimble, athletic zombies that go after man-meat like Olympic hurdlers (“28 Days Later," the remake of "Dawn of the Dead"), director Edgar Wright and co-writer/star Simon Pegg unleash a version of undead that's only slightly more lively than a department store dummy.

Listless and off-balance, with cloudy, cataract-filled eyes, the zombies in "Shaun" will gladly stand in place while you calmly dispatch them with golf clubs, cricket bats or, in one hilariously deadpan scene, old vinyl LPs.
Sade's "Smooth Operator" proves particularly effective.

To put it simply, they're like couch potatoes poking around the kitchen for a bag of Doritos. As such, it falls on a real couch potato to save the day: Shaun (Pegg), a likable and unassuming twentysomething loser who races around London's Crouch End district trying to collect his loved ones — including estranged girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield from "The War Zone") and his dear old mum — and lead them to zombie-free sanctuary in his favorite pub.

Also along for the ride is Shaun's flatulent, Tekken-playing, layabout flatmate Ed (Nick Frost), a character so violently irritating that he actually curdles some of the movie's funnier moments.

Director Wright — best known for his work on the British TV show "Spaced" — has constructed "Shaun of the Dead" like a piece of functionalist architecture: inside-out, allowing him to goof on the mechanisms of the genre without impairing their workability. In one brilliant scene, Liz's failed-actress flatmate teaches her fellow survivors how to "act" zombie.

"Vacant, with a hint of sadness," she observes, "like a drunk who lost a bet."

"Shaun of the Dead" is gory and obnoxious and just a bit too addled for its own good (a Mexican stand-off involving broken beer bottles pushes the limits of contrivance) but as a post modern send-up of George A. Romero (“Dawn of the Dead") and Sam Raimi (“Evil Dead 2"), it's not without amusements.

In "Shaun," the zombie plague comes on a slow-acting flu — spread, perhaps, by undernourished rave kids with their bobbing heads and standard-issue water bottles.

Wright's movie also sets a precedent — it is, to my knowledge, the first romantic comedy/zombie survival flick ever to grace movie theaters. In the end, all the gut-eating and head-bashing and Sade record-throwing proves to be nothing but Wright's delightfully warped vision of fanboy courtship.