Before Lionsgate releases Fido to go lurching its way to the general US public on June 15, movie lobby patrons will have this poster to whet their whistle. If blood-soaked picket fences and man-FUP can be counted as whistle whetters.
In the tradition of Benji, Free Willy and Night of the Living Dead, Fido tells the familiar story of the special bond between boy and zombie. The story picks up in a post World War Z Utopia of fenced cities and cheap labor performed by zombies in appetite-inhibiting collars. In the town of Willard, a l’il guy named Timmy is ignored by his parents, roughed up by bullies and befriends the new zombie house servant, which he names Fido. It’s all fun and games of catch in the park until Fido’s control collar is broken and he gnaws someone’s arm off. Timmy tries to hide the incident, but naturally, the bitee becomes a zombie and, ucollared, spreads the love to a few other townsfolk, threatening to end Timmy and Fido’s good times.
Fido already feels like it’s been in wide release for ages thanks to its debut at both the Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance, where I was able to catch it last week. I’ll leave the reviews to the professionals, but its a pretty delightful show- thoroughly light and airy with jarringly funny bouts of bloody zombie on human on zombie violence.
What they’ve done for the poster encapsulates the tone of Fido pretty well: Bright and sunny 50s suburbia, ironed and pressed neighborhood residents, Tim Blake Nelson mugging for the camera and the gaping maw of a rotting corpse in a jumpsuit.
The
film isn’t rated yet, but I’m not sure if the violence will put it over
the top as an "R", considering the tone of the thing. If it gets the
"R", it’ll be the lightest one I’ve seen in a long time.
For a large-and-in-charge view of the Fido poster, click here.