Dawn of the undead

Billy Connolly plays a family's pet zombie in the Andrew Currie film Fido. (Michael Courtney/TVA Films)

Though their teeth are black corn kernels and their grey skin sometimes drops off in clumps, the living dead in Fido are far less scary than the living. A sly social satire, Fido is set in a town of Technicolor, soulless perfectionism called Willard, a Father Knows Best slice of conformist Americana – filmed, naturally, in Kelowna, B.C. Part Lassie, part Shaun of the Dead, part Bowling for Columbine, Fido is a comedy about a world where the rich and aspiring keep zombies as servants. What’s less funny, and more interesting, is the filmmaker’s serious intention to show how our current culture of fear is breeding a different kind of zombie.

“I had the theme written in paper stuck above my computer while I reworked the script,” says Canadian director Andrew Currie, a slightly shy 40-year-old father of two. “It read: ‘Love not fear makes us more alive.’”

Fear is keeping the ZomCon Corporation in the black. Executives have figured out a way to harness zombies for profit with an electronic neck collar that turns them into docile servants. Like most imported domestic labourers, they do the jobs that nobody else wants to do: garbage pickup, housekeeper, milk and newspaper delivery (note to prospective outsourcers: a zombie’s stiff throw lacks both elegance and accuracy). The town is surrounded by a soaring electronic fence keeping out the untamed zombies who rule the rest of the planet. ZomCon flak Mr. Bottoms (played with mad brio by Henry Czerny) repeats the company’s mantra with glee: “Security through containment.”

The buzz phrase has a familiar post-Twin Towers ring to it, though Currie spent almost a decade developing the idea with his two partners in the Vancouver-based production company Anagram Pictures.

“After 9/11, the script started to change and address the whole homeland security thing. Mr. Bottoms became more of a Bush-like character, visiting [an elementary school] classroom at the start and saying to the kids: ‘We’re going to build the fences higher, security vans on every corner.’”

The film progressed from a zombie satire to a cultural satire in the past five years, drawing not only on post-9/11 anti-Muslim anxiety, but the controversial crackdown on illegal Mexican workers in the United States. “There was a lot of material to draw from. Have you heard about this fence Bush recently signed into law?” The controversial 700-mile US-Mexico fence, criticized by former Mexican president Vicente Fox as a modern “Berlin Wall,” does sound a little Fido.

One of the kids Mr. Bottoms preaches to is little Timmy Robinson (played by K’Sun Ray), a social outcast with a starched drone father (Dylan Baker) and a lonely, status-conscious mom named Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss, who earned a Genie for the role). To keep up with the Joneses, Helen gets the family a pet zombie. In this lurching, grunting slab of meat, played by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, Timmy finds himself, at last, a friend. Naturally, he names him Fido.

From left, Bill (Dylan Baker), Fido (Billy Connolly), Timmy (K'Sun Ray) and Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) enjoy an afternoon at the cemetery. (Michael Courtney/TVA Films)

“The father is completely terrified of human intimacy. Fido becomes the catalyst for change in the family because ironically, he’s more emotionally alive than [the father] is,” says Currie. Mom starts noticing Fido’s finer qualities, too: he’s not a bad dancer, he helps out around the house and he’s the very definition of the strong, silent type.

Connolly, a flamboyant, fast-talking comedian with an impenetrable brogue, is not known for reticence or the kind of subtly moving acting — Fido is all eyes, like most good dogs — the role required. His most noted dramatic work was a decade ago as Scottish confidante to Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, opposite Judi Dench.

“Mrs. Brown convinced us he could do it because there was such grace and humanity in the performance. I really needed to humanize Fido to get at what it means to be alive, and Billy did that,” says Currie.

Helen’s inner awakening recalls the 1950s melodramas made by the great German-American director Douglas Sirk, where women trapped by their circumstances find circuitous routes to liberty. Currie admits he’s a Sirk devotee, and that Fido borrows from the 1955 classic All That Heaven Allows, in which Jane Wyman, as an upper-class widow, scandalizes her family by falling for the gardener, played with a certain zombie-like simplicity by Rock Hudson.

“I kept imagining Fido in wide screen, Sirkian Technicolor. I love how his movies pushed the upper echelon of melodrama but always with a social critique playing out underneath,” says Currie. The director insisted on dolly and crane shots to get that wide, omniscient look, and the designers worked in a limited palette of colours. That artistry, combined with a $10.7 million dollar budget backed by Lionsgate Pictures, created a Canadian film that’s slick and placeless; in other words, it looks like an American movie. After a successful reception at Sundance, Fido will get a big U.S. release this June. The question the filmmakers are struggling with now is how to market this stitched-together hybrid.

“It’s hard to know how to get people to see a movie. Do you sell it as laugh-your-head- off, or do you infer depth? Or does depth push people away?” says Currie. “This is the movie that people can’t define.”

Fido opens March 16.

Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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