"The head casket, please..."

Fido is one of the better films I've seen recently. That's not to say I see a lot of films, because I don't see more than the average person, but if you asked me for a recommendation, I'd tell you I really enjoyed Fido.

Now it's true, I like zombie movies... but this is a very different kind of zombie movie. The premise of the story is that a radioactive particle shower from space sweeps across the earth (can anyone say H.G. Wells or John Wyndham?), causing all the previously dead people to come alive. The Zombie Wars ensue, with municipalities then fenced and gated to keep the zombies outside. But this radioactivity of course remains, so that anyone who dies even within the compound, comes back as a zombie. Funerals thus become expensive because you have to purchase two caskets: one for the body, and the other for your head (which of course has to be cut off to prevent you from becoming a zombie). Hence the post title.

What makes the story absolutely delightful is that it takes place in a kind of alternate history 1950s, where moms stay home and bake pies, little boys innocently play baseball, little girls go to ballet or jump rope, and war heroes are bigger than life. The next door neighbor, a veteran of the Zombie Wars, is more Cary Grant than Rambo, to give you some idea of the tenor of the story.

Into the mix throw an ingenious scientist who invents a collar that suppresses the flesh-eating desires of zombies. Without the threat of him eating you, a zombie can be put to all kind of wonderful uses, and a new servant class is born.

Now, little Timmy has some questions about zombies, like whether they are dead or alive, but his father discourages any talk of zombies after having had to kill his own father who became a zombie. Thus "we don't talk about grandpa" matches the repressed gender role his mother is forced to play and his loneliness and need for a father (which in turn lead to several pitiful looks on Timmy's part).

Mom (played by Carrie Moss) decides it's about time they got a zombie; after all they're the only people on the block who don't have one, and Timmy grows close to the zombie (Billy Connelly of all people), who he names Fido.

Fido gets in trouble, and so does Timmy, but his relationship with his mother grows stronger, as does his affection for his zombie... in short, after a conflict, they all live happily ever after... well, most of them.

The movie wouldn't work the way it does if it wasn't set in what looks like our past. Imagining the same scenario in the future would just produce another stock zombie movie, but this one has a great balance of drama and comedy that made it a unique movie-going experience for us this weekend.