Boy, this is a tough mix.
I’ve seen more movies tank because they try to mix horror and humor than almost any other particular genre-bending effort. And I’m not sure why it’s so tricky, either. I think these are the two genres where people are trying to get an involuntary physical reaction out of you as a viewer, so it makes sense that they’re closely related...
... well, I guess you could say porn tries to do that, too. Hmmmmmm.
This weekend sees the release of FIDO, a movie I knew nothing about until our own Quint went a wee bit apeshit about it last year. I have a long history of disagreeing with other contributors on this site when they adopt films. Like CABIN FEVER, for example. Oh, man, did I hear about CABIN FEVER for a loooooong time. “It’s awesome! It will change your life! It is the greatest horror film in the history of horror films!” And... it wasn’t. I’ve seen you guys complain about it in talkbacks, too, and it’s just one of those things... sometimes people get crazy excited about a wee little tiny film, and in trying to convey that excitement to others, we can go overboard. When Quint went nutty for FIDO, I sort of put it in the category of “Yeah, we’ll see.”
And whattaya know? It’s a spiffy little movie, funny and sweet and with a great eye for time and place. Andrew Currie does a very nice job as a director, evoking FRANKENWEENIE/EDWARD SCISSORHANDS-style Tim Burton but never aping him. He’s got a fondness for ‘50s style that doesn’t seem like kitsch or like an empty pose. Instead, he seems to use it as a way of suggesting an innocent-looking world with secrets and tensions bubbling just under the surface. He uses his setting to ground the admittedly fantastic premise of the film, that the world has been through a Great Zombie War, and that they have come out the other side of it as the masters of these creatures, able to control them by the use of restraining collars. Zombies have become a subclass in society, used as domestic help and in thankless service jobs. Guilt-free slaves, essentially.
The world has become a series of walled communities. Inside the walls, it’s this perfect plastic life. Outside the walls, everything is a “wild zone,” where zombies still roam free. Even within the walls, anyone who dies will still become a zombie unless they are buried without their heads, so people have to pay attention. Especially to the elderly, who “you can’t trust.” Aside from these minor inconveniences, it seems like a pretty good world overall. The film tells the story of the Robinson family. Bill (Dylan Baker) is a typical dad, a little bit of a workaholic, frustrated by the attempts his wife Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) makes to keep up with the neighbors. She finally talks Bill into buying the family a zombie (Billy Connolly) of their own, a development that troubles their ten-year-old son Timmy (newcomer K’Sun Ray) at first. He’s picked up his dad’s phobias about zombies, and he doesn’t trust the zombie at first. But gradually, he begins to see the zombie as more than just a convenience when it protects him from some bullies and starts to exhibit a real personality. He decides to name the zombie, like a pet, and soon Fido is his best friend. This causes Timmy to question the notion that zombies are simply dead meat, stupid and without any spark behind their eyes. Sure, Fido has the occasional slip, and a neighbor or two might get eaten, but Timmy can tell... deep down inside, Fido’s good.
Bill has good reason to be upset about zombies, but he won’t tell his family why. And Helen’s drive to keep up with her neighbors masks a deeper dissatisfaction. And as Fido works his way into their lives, all these things come bubbling up, exposed. And by the time they realize how important Fido is to them, those “little slips” catch up, and ZomCon shows up to take Fido away. Timmy has no choice but to fight for his friend, enlisting the help of his creepy neighbor Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson), who might love his own zombie, Tammy, just a little bit too much.
FIDO doesn’t quite tap the same sort of genuine emotion that SHAUN OF THE DEAD managed, but it’s a solid satire, and it’s worth checking out. Don’t go in expecting it to be a horror film, though, because it’s obvious that screenwriters Dennis Heaton, Robert Chomiak, and Currie weren’t really trying to write a horror film. They use the zombies as a device, and they aim for laughs and social commentary more than anything.
On the other hand, Jonathan King’s BLACK SHEEP manages to play as both horror and humor in equal measure, and that’s fairly amazing when you consider it’s the story of killer sheep. If you asked me to pick the five least threatening animals in the world, I think sheep would make the list. Then again, so would birds, and Hitchcock managed to make that work. If FIDO seems to channel the work of early Tim Burton, then BLACK SHEEP definitely takes its cues from the early gory days of Peter Jackson’s career. There were a few places in the film where I felt the same mix of hysteria and nausea that DEAD ALIVE and BAD TASTE both inspired, and I like that feeling. It’s not something many filmmakers are able to pull off. You know where I mentioned those films that other contributors have overhyped? Another of those would be UNDEAD, which I really, really, really wanted to like. It just felt inert when it obviously wanted to be insane. Well, King manages to set the tone for his film from the opening scenes, and he maintains it for the entire running time. As a child, Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) showed a natural aptitude for sheep farming, which made his father very proud. Unfortunately, it also made his older brother Angus (Peter Feeney) very jealous, and Angus played an awful prank on Henry. Turned out to be poorly timed, though, because as he was playing the prank, their father died in an unfortunate accident. The combination of the prank and the trauma led to Henry developing an almost pathological fear of sheep, and he left the family farm as soon as he could.
Now, as an adult, he comes back to the farm, thinking he’s going to have a quick visit to pick up a check as Angus buys out his part of the farm. What he doesn’t know is that Angus has big plans, determined to create a new breed of sheep through genetic engineering. Now, what have we learned about genetic engineering in horror films, kids? That’s right... don’t do it. Because when you do, you’ll create evil zombie sheep and freaky sheep-people mutants that will slaughter all of your investors. And as soon as Henry shows up on the farm, everything goes to hell. Fast. And pretty soon, Henry finds himself on the run, fighting the evil sheep with the help of an adorable hippie chick named Experience (Danielle Mason). It’s not much more complicated than that, but what makes it work is the way Jonathan King obviously knows how to stage a scare and also how to stage a joke. And he knows how to balance the two with surprising precision.
I love the gore in the film because it’s not trying to offend or top any gore ever seen on film. Instead, it’s gleeful splatter, and King seems to relish every drop he spills. I’m curious to see what King can do with weightier material, but this film’s so much fun that I’m glad this is where he started. He proved his chops, and if you’re tired of seeing films that don’t live up to their potential this summer, then you should definitely check this one out, where a ridiculous premise yields deliciously deranged results.
Now let me go finish some of these damn transcriptions so I can get these set visits and editing bay visits and interviews posted for you guys this weekend.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
