Shaun of the Dead, 2004

After a century of horror movies, can there still be innovation? Will directors find novel ways of scaring an audience? Or, with all taboos broken, have we entered the drab era of recycling? That seems the case, with official remakes of Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre proliferating, and most other horror films running the old tropes with more explicit effects. An age of decadence is a ripe time for parody. Paging the Brit tag team of writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-star Simon Pegg for this zombie comedy of manners, in which Pegg tries to woo back his ex-girlfriend while fighting off a suburb of the undead. Wright, who'd be a director to watch in any genre, plays world-class games with the camera and the viewer's expectations of what's supposed to happen in a scare film. Shaun is spooky, silly and smart-smart-smart. And that'll do until the next great horror movie comes along.