"Shaun of the Dead" received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 92%, based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of 7.78/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Shaun of the Dead" cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans". Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed nicely acted". Wendy Ide for Screen Daily wrote that the film "proves that the move from small to big screen comedy does not always end in artistic failure", saying that the film stays true to Pegg and Wright's style but also makes use of comedy more accessible to the British masses than that of "Spaced".