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Rating: 4 stars

All movies seen on 10/24/2007

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Fido (2006)

Directed by Andrew Currie

Comedy

Most recently watched by sleestakk

Overview

Timmy Robinson’s best friend in the whole wide world is a six-foot tall rotting zombie named Fido. But when Fido eats the next-door neighbor, Mom and Dad hit the roof, and Timmy has to go to the ends of the earth to keep Fido a part of the family. A boy-and-his-dog movie for grown ups, “Fido” will rip your heart out.

Rated R | Length 92 minutes

Actors

Billy Connolly | Carrie-Anne Moss | Dylan Baker | Kesun Loder | Henry Czerny | Tim Blake Nelson | Sonja Bennett | Alexia Fast | Brandon Olds | Jennifer Clement | Rob LaBelle | Tiffany Lyndall-Knight | Mary Black | Raymond E. Bailey | Doug Abrahams | Aaron Brown

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

This review originally appeared as a DVD review for PopSyndicate.com.

What’s that, Zombie? Timmy’s stuck in a well?

Okay, we’re done with zombie movies for a few years aren’t we?

House of the Dead, a Dawn of the Dead remake, Land of the Dead, Zombie Town and Shaun of the Dead and on and on and on. And then there’s Fido.

Travel back with me to 1950s America. The Zombie Wars are over thanks to Dr. Reinhold Geiger, who discovered that brain destruction kills the undead. Since the government has regained control and fenced in the cities, Zomcon has stepped in to fill all your security- and domesticated-zombie needs. Their newest delivery is Fido, a lummoxy zombie given over to the Robinson family. Unfortunately Fido’s control collar shorts out when he’s assaulted by an old woman and her walker while he’s trying to fetch a ball for the Macaulay Culkin-esque Timmy Robinson. As zombies are wont to do, Fido kills the old woman and young Timmy is forced to cover up his mistake after the collar regains control. But, before Timmy can bury the old lady, she rises from the dead and kills someone else. That person bites someone else ,and the zombies rise again.

The “What If?” world that was tipped at the end of Shaun is vigorously imagined under the hand of director/co-writer Andrew Currie. Fido is a nice homage to early family television as well as mid-century sci-fi and horror movies. Zombie presence nods to Romero, but it’s more visual contrast than comparison, meaning that there’s a blue sky palette and only a trickle of blood compared to others in the zombie genre. Heartwarming charm, of the twisted undead sort, is more prevalent than laugh out loud moments, but they’re almost unneeded with an understated, but standout, indie-tastic cast. Shockingly, even the usual cardboard cutout Carrie-Anne Moss gets few complaints from me.

The special features on the DVD are fairly run-of-the mill with a short making-of documentary, deleted scenes with sparse commentary, bloopers, photos and film commentary. Interestingly, along with the main commentary, there’s a select-scene commentary with film composer Don MacDonald where he discusses why he chose what instruments he did to represent certain characters. It’s a choice little add-on for musicians and soundtrack buffs. A hidden gem buried two menus deep is ““The Storybook of Fido”” that uses illustrations played to music and narration telling a short-story version of the movie that fills in some original-story details that were left out of the adaptation. If Fido: the Storybook doesn’t exist, it really needs to for your li’l demons, or as a novelty item if nothing else.

The Oughts have been plagued with zombie movies to varying degrees of entertainment and success, but without the societal subtextual guts that were so prevalent early on in the genre. Thankfully Currie and his co-writer Robert Chomiak aren’t afraid to bite down with the lively setting playing contrarian to the central question of who’s really living: the alive or the undead?

Fido is really the last brain-destroying shotgun blast needed for the zombie genre for this decade and maybe the next.

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