ironhorse_iv Review of Fido

Fido (2006)

Night of the Living Dead meets Pleasantville. Fido will rip your heart out.

[7/10 · 4 March 2013]

Fido is one of those satire boy and his pet comedy that makes you wonder if the director writer Andrew Currie just watch an old Lassie episode, and just rewrote the part of the dog with the word 'zombie'. The film takes place in a 1950s-esque alternate universe where the Zombie War just ended. People continue to live normal lives in fenced in communities with the help of a governing Zomcon corporation. Due to the small population, many of the jobs have been taken over by collar control zombies that Zomcon allow its citizens to have. The mock documentary kind-of 50s newsreel narration that explains the story is neat. Tim (K'Sun Ray) dreams of owning a zombie. He finds a pet in Fido (Billy Connelly) which his mother Helen Robinson (Carrie-Anne Moss) buys in spite of her husband Bill's (Dylan Baker) a zombie phobia, as Bill has had bad experiences with zombies having been a veteran of the Zombie Wars. Billy Connelly is just awesome in the role of Fido as he pull being a cute zombie off. Undoubtedly, the collar fatal-flaw for Timmy's Pet Fido breaks free and bite an old lady. Soon the whole town has a small outbreak popping everywhere and Timmy and Fido has to find a way to stop it. Fido is an exercise in insanity, borrowing from Romero's original intended satire from his first zombie films which spoke of the communism red scare and the idea of a new generation eating the previous one. I think the film is trying to mock what people view is the Golden Age of idealized suburban life by saying beyond its white fences, there is a ugly truth to it. It was a decade of death as well with the Korean War and Cold War fears. The 1950's element is done fantastically well, from the dialogue to the cinematic clichés, but its faults to meet the demand in comedy. Its comedy is a hit and miss. One such miss is its idea of having Necrophilia as a certain theme throughout the film. There is a character name Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) who use zombies as mistresses. Theopolis is a name spell to mean Lover of God or Friend of God, very loosely close to the Greek word Theophilus. The filmmakers might be trying to say that theistic religions are invariably obsessed with death. Who knows, but it's not only Mr. Theopolis as Helen also has a thing for Fido. Helen even says, she wishes she had met him before she got married and when he was still alive. Leave it to Carrie's beaver wanting things. While Carrie Anne Moss is hot, I don't want to think of Fido and her hooking up. Eww. Necrophilia is taboo for a reason and it's rarely funny. Hints why it fail to be funny in this movie. It sometimes feels like the director spent his entire budget on some vintage autos and an unnecessary helicopter shots as the movie fail in the box-office. It was straight to DVD release of Fido albeit with enough gore to gain it an R-rating in the US. Fido doesn't do anything, so it's not a comedy. It's not scary, so it's not a horror either. What is it? It's a nonstop fan boy homage to older, and meaningful zombie flicks. All that said, the cinematography, set design, colors and actors are all great. Fido is a wonderfully original and morbid take on the idea of a boy and his pet. For zombie movie fans looking for something different and offbeat, give Fido a try.