2006 | Andrew Currie | 91 mins | 15
I’m quite the fan of zombie films, but other than Romero’s/the Evil Deads and Shaun of the Dead little has really entertained men, which is why i’m happy to report than Andrew Currie’s Fido is a great watch. The film is set a few years after the “zombie war”, caused by a radioactive meteor passing earth which reanimated all of the recently deceased, after a while a doctor found that by destroying the head the zombie dies, which helped mankind defeat the zombies, however there was still radiation left, meaning that anybody that dies from then on becomes a zombie. The same doctor then found a way of domesticating the zombies with a hi-tech collar strapped round the zombies neck his/her instinct to kill is removed meaning that human and zombie can live side by side, generally with the zombies acting as servants. All of this zombie taming is taken care of by a company called ‘Zomcom’, whose head of security Mr. Bottoms (Henry Czerny) has just moved in next door to our protagonist Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) and his parents.
Timmy is a lonely kid with no friends and is often picked on by the 2 local bullies, his mum (Carrie-Anne Moss in another small, quirky film much like 2005’s Chumscrubber) is more concerned about how the town view them than anything else (”Did anyone see you like this?” is her reply when Timmy tells her he was beaten up at school) and his father (Dylan Baker) is petrified of zombies ever since his re-animated father tried to eat him, in turn he has become quite detached from family life, he and his wife even sleep in separate single beds in their room. Taking all this into account it is no wonder that when he is picked on by the local bullies and is saved by the Robinson’s zombie (Billy Connolly in a role that reminds me much of fan favourite Bub from Day of the Dead) (purchased by Timmy’s mum to impress the neighbours) he befriends him and names him Fido, all is going well until Fido’s collar malfunctions and Fido kills Mrs. Henderson from across the road.
From herein Timmy must protect Fido not just from the public were they to find out about how Mrs. Henderson’s death, but also his dad who is pretty unhappy about just how close both his son and his wife are becoming to Fido. It’s a truly funny and often heartwarming film. Think Shaun of the Dead meets American Beauty meets Lassie.
I did however have a few gripes with the film. Firstly it can’t seem to decide what message it wants to get across, it cuts back and forth from issues relating to how society interacts with each other, such as Timmy’s mother’s constant fear of what the town think of them, to slavery, to issues of prejudice. Additionally there were a few loose ends or areas of the film that weren’t fully explored, for instance one of the opening scenes is of Timmy admiring Mr. Bottom’s daughter Cindy as she shoots targets during “outside education” at school while Lee Silver’s “Ninety nine pounds of dynamite” plays thus we are to believe a forbidden love story may develop, however this is never explored again.
One final thing I’d like to comment on is the colour of the film, it’s extremely rich and is displayed on the DVD magnificently despite being a small release, it really added a lot of depth to the film.
Despite it’s flaws Fido is a great film with solid performances from all and enough black comedy and satire to please fans of films like Shaun of the Dead and enough gore one could expect from a 15 rated zombie film. I can’t reccommend it highly enough, see Fido.
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