Fido, A Pleasant Suprise

There are very few decades as ripe for satire as the 1950’s. Director Andrew Currie takes note of this and delivers something truly unique in his oddball comedy, Fido. In a decade full of fears, fear of communism, fear of falling behind the Jones’s, Currie delivers a new fear, fear that your zombie might eat the mailman. The film revolves around a small town, in a world where radiation contamination causes all corpses to return to life. Fortunately Zomcon, a zombie control company, is there to save the day. Zomcon provides affordable zombie controls, that allow any family to know the joy of owning a house zombie. 

Lets get down to business. The whole ordeal seems to be taken out of the Tim Burton school of thought. Currie takes this seemingly perfect town and introduces an extremely dark element, in this case zombies. The acting is just hokie enough to be appropriate for the 1950’s, and trust me, this is a compliment. It all plays out like an old episode of Lassie (seeing as the main character’s name is Timmy, I don’t see this as a coincidence.) The social satire is there, but humor takes precedence. This director seems to do something that Romero could never do, create an entertaining film ripe with social satire. The setting makes the movie, as well as the oddball characters, and the overall feeling of nonchalance (a zombie eating someone is treated about the same as a dog “watering” the carpet.) Fido is truly an accomplishment, not without its flaws, but very entertaining none the less.