Dawn of the Dead influenced Shaun of the Dead

The title is the acknowledgement. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have named Romero throughout, and Romero liked it enough to cast both of them as zombies in Land of the Dead. What the film is built on:

• Romero's rules, kept exactly: slow zombies, bites convert, destroy the brain, and no explanation offered
• The siege structure, with a small group barricaded in an ordinary consumer space. Romero uses a shopping mall, Wright uses a pub, and both are chosen because the survivors would have gone there anyway
• The satire in the same position: Dawn of the Dead is about shoppers who barely change behaviour when they die, and Shaun opens on commuters filmed to be indistinguishable from the infected
• Specific shots and beats restaged, including the walk to the shop that the audience can see is wrong and the character cannot

Filed HIGH: without Dawn of the Dead there is no joke to make.