Blog From The Bench

Fido
Director: Andrew Currie

If Norman Rockwell was eaten by a zombie, you would end up with something quite similar to Fido, a surreal piece of Canadian cinema that turns an innocuous subject like zombies into wholesome family fodder straight out of Leave It To Beaver.

After “space dust” converted all the world’s dead into reanimated corpses, a corporation known as ZomCom stepped in to rescue humanity from the dreaded Zombie Wars. Barricading each town from the outside and affixing zombies with control collars, ZomCom preserves the idyllic lifestyle for all townsfolk, transforming the once flesh-eating zombie into a docile servant ready to wash your car, carry your groceries or walk your dog for you. Indeed, in this quaint little slice of 1950s Americana, one is judged by how many zombies they have in their employ, and whether or not they can afford a proper funeral.

Timmy is an unhappy and lonely child, alienated from his father (Dylan Baker, Spider-Man 2) and unable to connect with his mother, Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss, The Matrix). When the head of ZomCom security move into the neighborhood, Helen is mortified that her family has yet to acquire a single zombie in their employ. So, she goes out and acquires one. The zombie, Fido (played hilariously by Billy Connolly, The Boondock Saints) becomes the father figure to Timmy that his father never was, playing catch with him in the park, spending time with him, and only occasionally getting loose and eating a neighbor or two.

Surprisingly wholesome and sardonic, Fido plays its subject matter extremely straight, creating a surrealist 1950s suburban paradise with zombie milkmen and paperboys that feels as wholesome and normal as anything you could imagine. The inherent absurdity of the subject matter is the film’s ultimate comedic weapon, as the inhabitants of this small, peaceful community deal with the occasional zombie attack as routinely as ants invading a picnic lunch in the park.

Zombie and horror fans will be dismayed at how eerily wholesome and neutral Fido remains to the end, with minimum gore and blood and almost nothing in the way of conventional horror, but therein lay the film’s inherent charm. There is literally no movie ever created quite like Fido, a slice of suburban paradise riddled with the walking undead, except perhaps for the quirkiness and dreamlike quality of Edward Scissorhands, which comes fairly close.

Fido is a crowd-pleaser, a visual feast of exceptionally vintage automobiles, fantastic clothes and hairstyles and a dreamlike suburban landscape preserved forever in time. Also, zombies. Also of note is Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) playing a hilarious playboy neighbor with a young teenage zombie servant in his “employ”.

It may be a one-note film, but oh, what a note. There is little depth to Fido beyond its charm and quirkiness, but it is a splendid realization of an unexpected genre mash-up. This is Canadian cinema at its most appealing and original.

Verdict: 80