Fido (2006)

Fido (2006) Movie Info

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Growing up in a typical ‘50s suburb is tough for little Timmy Robinson. He gets bullied at school, embarrassed in front of his class, and ignored at home. He also has a crush on the new girl in the neighborhood, but doesn’t know how to talk to her. It doesn’t help that her dad is so intimidating he’s the big-shot head of security at Zomcon, the megacorporation that ended the Zombie War and domesticated the undead.

Did I mention the zombies? They’ve overrun the world, and (à la Romero) everyone who dies with their head intact becomes one. Savage zombies roam the Wild Zone, kept out of the cities by fences, while the ones on the inside are kept as pets and slaves, made servile by Zomcon’s electronic domestication collars. Anyway, Timmy’s a bit confused by the whole thing, and doesn’t know which grownups to turn to for guidance. Plus he’s got no friends. So it’s not easy being little Timmy.

Everything changes when his mom brings home a surprise: their very own zombie! Timmy’s family was the last one on the block not to have one, but now Fido can help with the chores, play with Timmy at the park, and protect him from bullies. But Timmy’s troubles aren’t over yet. Just as he’s starting to bond with his new pet, Fido has a little mishap and eats one of the neighbors. Now it’s up to Timmy to keep Fido’s slip-up hidden from his parents as well as the probing eye of Zomcon.

Think Shaun of the Dead meets Lassie and The Truman Show. Set in the postwar era of idealized suburbia, consumerism, and white picket fences (the recent “war” was not WWII but the Zombie War, although the difference is negligible), Fido is a brilliantly executed spoof of ‘50s culture and representations such as Leave It to Beaver; it bears an especially close subtextual relationship to 1955’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Amidst the sunny, neighborly suburban setting, the constant threat of being eaten by or turning into a zombie together with the fact that the undead are taken for granted to the point where they’ve been commodified lends the whole movie a pervasive irony that’s amusing even at times when the surface humor slows.

The movie depicts a society in which the semblance of happiness is the central pillar life itself is like one giant charade, subtly mirroring the zombies themselves (who have only the semblance of life). The marvelous art production and set and costume design throughout the film color the world with a cheery brightness that borders on the ridiculous; against this brightness, the drabness of the zombies is a strangely welcome contrast.

Ironically, the zombie Fido (Scottish übercomedian Billy Connolly) unwittingly starts to bring both trouble and some real brightness into the lives of the Robinson family. Little Timmy (K’Sun Ray), in his innocent bewilderment, is the only one willing to question the status quo and the power of the all American war hero, the charismatic Zomcon fascist John Bottoms (Henry Czerny). Timmy’s mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) has for too long contented herself with running a smooth household and preparing dinners for her emotionally repressed husband (Dylan Baker), and soon begins to see something a little more human? in the growling, lumbering Fido. If the Robinsons don’t get eaten by the living dead first, they just might develop a new sense of what it means to be a family.

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