FIDO

Post-World War II. A radioactive space cloud brings the dead back to life on Earth and drives humans to wage war against the zombies. After a few years, the multinational corporation ZombCon solves the problem: collars are created that, when applied to the undead, manage to inhibit their violent urges, transforming them into obedient and docile lobotomized beings. The zombies are thus used by humans as all-purpose helpers and employed in the most humiliating and arduous jobs. Timmy's family also decides to take in a zombie, immediately baptized Fido, to whom the child becomes particularly attached. But soon, the city's tranquility is disrupted by several fatal incidents triggered by Fido himself. In the vast sea of photocopy films dedicated to the figure of the zombie, we see an enjoyable variant emerge called "Fido". Director and screenwriter Andrew Currie obviously looks to the mythology created by George A. Romero, confirming the rule that after "Night of the Living Dead" every zombie film is the same zombie film, but he intelligently deviates from the usual plot, using only some elements dear to the Pittsburgh director but reinventing the rest. Thus, there will be a humanity shaken by the zombie plague that has self-isolated in an apparently safe territory (very "Land of the Dead") and there are zombies capable of feeling human emotions ("Day of the Dead"), the same look of the undead is the "classic", but removing that, we have one of the most original and successful variants of the genre. Some screenplay ideas are simply brilliant, above all the opening with an ironic educational propaganda film intended to explain to school children (and the viewer with them) what happened on Earth and what role ZombCon plays in the affair, and the idea of setting the story in the 1950s in a climate that much reminds the Cold War. After the second world war, the two international blocs East-West and their main representatives, the Soviet Union-United States, fell into a climate of deep hostility that took the name Cold War. The conflict, although it lasted for almost half a century, fortunately did not materialize into a real confrontation, but the ideological confrontation became very visible, even inspiring the cultural industry in the creation of some of the best American science fiction films of the period. "Fido" seems to want to embrace that optic from a nostalgic-ironic-critical point of view and to do so in the most explicit way, it immerses the situation in the 1950s, in one of those cheerful American provincial towns where everything is so falsely perfect, where typical happy families like "Happy Days" live. In this situation of apparent happiness, one lives surrounded by a world populated by undead hungry for human flesh where this time the Romerian similarity "zombie=human corrupted by society" seems to be reversed. Currie, in fact, shows us man at his worst, deeply racist, consumerist and inserted in an elitist optic little comforting. What is most emphasized is the deep fear and hostility of man towards the different, towards those who come from the zone beyond the barricade, cannibal monsters and without reason. Only a few characters are saved from the negative connotation and they are the innocents (little Timmy) or those who have learned to coexist with the different (Mrs. Robinson and the neighbor), who do not exploit them according to the typical capitalist vision but manage to feel emotions towards them. It is therefore the human being who shows himself "blind" and manipulated (by the all-powerful ZombCon), while the zombie is almost synonymous with freedom, of anarchic awakening from the lethargy of life. The director's intention is rather deep and to a large extent expressed effectively and with sagacity, thanks to the light tone of the comedy; some minor flaws can be noticed just in the sometimes fluctuating rhythm of the film. The direction is very sober and in some cases ennobled by beautiful visual ideas; in the cast, the well-known faces of Carrie-Ann Moss ("Matrix"; "Disturbia") in the role of Mrs. Robinson, Dylan Baker ("Spiderman 2"; "Era mio padre") in the role of Mr. Robinson and Billy Connolly ("The Last Samurai"; "X-Files: I Want to Believe") in the rotting rags of Fido stand out. Intelligent and successful, "Fido" is an alternative vision on the theme of the undead that is absolutely worth keeping in the collection. It deserves half a pumpkin more.