by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It's long since official - zombies are the monsters of the moment in recent cinema. Between 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and the recent Resident Evil sequel, shambling undead cannibals are getting camera time unequalled since the heyday of the late '70s.

The latest entry in the category is Shaun of the Dead. The British indie has bitten a massive chunk out of the movie market at home - its opening-weekend take exceeded that of 28 Days Later and it outgrossed (money-wise, that is) the Dawn remake.

Billing itself as a rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy), Shaun of the Dead is in fact an offshoot of the humble Britcom Spaced, an episode of which inspired the feature. As such, the comedic strength of the film lies in the pithy interplay between the (living) characters, rather than the usual horror-comedy sight gags and excesses. In fact, the zombie aspect is played pretty straight, and coughs up some genuinely creepy moments.

The titular Shaun (played by the capable Simon Pegg) is a goateed goof spinning his wheels in a dead-end managerial job and staring down the barrel of the big three-oh. His tubby schlub of a roomate, Ed, meanwhile mans the PlayStation and little else. Shaun's grief with his girlfriend and his mom is the focal crisis of his life until it gradually dawns on him that London is overrun with groaning, flesh-eating living dead.

The laffs are concentrated in this middle section of Shaun, the stretch where the two roomates ignore the surrounding apocalypse, assuming everyone's drunk or stupid. One excellent extended take has a hungover Shaun stumbling out for a morning soda and home again, blithely unaware of the carnage around him. Eventually, of course, Shaun and Ed clue in and go into desperate-heroes mode.

Shaun of the Dead is a distinctly English film, and not just in the dreary London-suburb setting and occasional power montage à la Guy Ritchie. It's the befuddled, "Oh, I say" reserve with which the characters confront the corpse-riddled cataclysm into which they're tossed - crisply crafted by director Edgar Wright and co-writer Pegg - that stamps a big fat Union Jack on the movie. That said, Shaun will please anyone for whom the words "Remove the head or destroy the brain" have a warm, familiar ring.

Shaun Of The Dead opens Friday, Sept. 24

>> Movie Listings