DVD review (region 1)
Directed by Andrew Currie
Starring Billy Connolly, Carrie-Anne Moss, Dylan Baker, K’Sun Ray
Release date Out now

In an alternate 1950s America the “zombie wars” have been won and the undead reduced to suburban servants, thanks to electronic collars that render them innocuous. Timmy Robinson (Ray), a sensitive and lonely child, gains a new best friend in his family’s zombie, Fido (Connolly). However, things get complicated when Fido’s collar malfunctions and he devours a neighbour...

Its strong premise suggests that we’re in for an interesting spin on the zom-com genre, but Fido unfortunately disappoints in its delivery.

Although hailed by some critics as a satire, its satirical content is negligible. Ultimately, it offers the same old critique of 1950s suburbia as a dull, conformist cul-de-sac populated by the emotionally repressed, more fully explored elsewhere, as in Pleasantville. The addition of zombies doesn’t really add anything new to this decidedly less than groundbreaking idea; they don’t provide the central metaphor, as in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, they’re merely part of the scenery.

That Fido doesn’t amount to much of a satire hardly matters, of course; what really lets it down is the way the film wastes its potential through lazy and unfocused development. It gets some mileage out of subverting the one boy and his dog genre – there is a scene where Fido goes to the rescue in the style of Lassie – but although it may have made a good short, the idea is too thin to spread across a feature. There just aren’t enough good jokes and inventive situations, leaving the plot to meander along fairly inconsequentially. It’s like the filmmakers came up with a great scenario – setting a zombie film in the age of conformity and casting the zombies as servile domestics – and then creatively ran dry.

As a result the whole thing seems strangely subdued, much like the collared zombies themselves, and never really gets going. It could have done with a touch of the outrageous exuberance of Braindead to liven it up a bit.

Despite all its failings, Fido isn’t a dead loss. The cinematography and cast (particularly an unrecognisable Connolly) are excellent, and it does possess a few good lines - “Just because your father tried to eat you does that mean we all have to be unhappy?” But what should have been a real contender in the zombie genre is, instead, a mere curio. Joe Green

VERDICT: 6/10
While worth watching when it makes it to late night TV, Fido falls short of its potential to have been an essential purchase for zombie aficionados.