Sunday would be a quieter day for me with three press screenings at the Yarrow and the Holiday Village multiplex across the parking lot. George Ratliff's Joshua had been highly recommended to me by Greg Elwood of MSN Movies, or else there would have been no way I would have been up for an 8:30 AM screening on a Sunday morning. Andrew Currie's Fido is a movie I've wanted to see since I first heard about it back at the San Diego Comic-Con in '05, and it's been sitting on Lionsgate's shelf for far too long, for whatever reason. (The third movie of the day, Steve Buscemi's Interview, will be discussed in a separate piece.)
As the first narrative film from the director of the doc Hell House, Joshua is pretty amazing, tackling the creepy kid thriller genre in an innovative real-world way. The last time someone explored this territory within a New York City setting, was the abysmal Birth, but this avoids all pretentions with talented filmfest regulars Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga as the parents of a clever but strange 9-year-old boy named Joshua (newcomer Jacob Kogan). When they give birth to a new baby daughter, Joshua starts feeling unloved and he begins behaving even stranger, making his parents think that he's out to harm his baby sister.
As much as one might want to lump this movie in with the collected works of Cameron Bright, Joshua is of a different breed, its brilliance lies in its writing and the ability of its unbelievable cast at selling the premise as something that might be able to happen. Most of it down to the amazing debut by Jacob Kogan in the title role, a memorable performance that drives the movie more like the original Damien than any of the recent batch of creepy kids.
But the talent doesn't stop there, and the movie wouldn't be half as entertaining with anyone other than Sam Rockwell as Joshua's father. Rockwell adds a surprising amount of humor playing a typical 30-something stock broker trying to maintain his youthful life despite the new baby and disturbingly creepy son. Vera Farmiga delivers another exceptional performance as Joshua's mother, who is slowly being driven insane by the crying of the baby and Joshua's machinations. She has some great scenes, many of them involving her flipping out and swearing in front of her kids. The rest of the cast includes equally excellent performers like Dakota Fanning as Joshua's beloved uncle, Celia Weston as his ultra-religious grandmother and Michael McKean as Rockwell's serious boss.
Sure, there are a few cheap scares--Kogan is great at doing the "sudden appear"--but the movie owes more to quality real-life thrillers like Rosemary's Baby and Fatal Attraction than the typical creepy kid thriller we've seen far too many times in recent years. As much as Ratliff keeps the film light, he also builds the tension over the course of the movie to a number of gripping climaxes that leave the viewer quite shaken by how subtly and effective this movie delivers on the thrills.
Although Joshua doesn't have a distributor at this time, I expect it to do well in the festival's narrative competition and become a solid sleeper hit whenever it gets a theatrical release. (UPDATE: Joshua has been picked up by Fox Searchlight for $3.7 million according to The Hollywood Reporter.)
Andrew Currie's Fido was a very different movie than what I expected, more of a comedy satire than a typical zombie horror movie, even when compared to Shaun of the Dead, which maintained many of the tropes of Romero's zombie classics while adding modern British humor.
Fido's '50s suburban setting makes it easy to find humor when you implant the clever premise of an earth that has been overtaken by zombies who have been domesticated as house servants and pets by corporate giant Zomcom. Young Timmy (K'Sun Ray) is tortured by his schoolmates, maybe because his family is the only one in his neighborhood not to have a zombie. His mother, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, finally convinces her husband Bill (Dylan Baker) to get one, which the young boy dubs "Fido," and their new zombie, played by an unrecognizable beardless Billy Connolly, is surprisingly loyal, even when his "domesticating collar" malfunctions, sending him on a carniverous rampage.
Currie certainly had a hard act to follow with Shaun, but he delivers some good laughs with his satire of '50s movies, which comes across a bit like the old B-movies of that era. It offers a lot of campy fun for those who enjoy those films, but modern zombie fans may be disappointed that it veers so far away from normal zombie films with the rare killings and gore being played more for laughs than scares.
But the movie really is very funny, mostly due to Connolly and Moss, who have a lot of fun with the premise and the setting, while Tim Blake Nelson has some fun scenes as their neighbor, who owns a semi-attractive female zombie for reasons you don't want to spend too much time pondering.
Currie's writing is solid and there are some great running gags throughout the movie, but for whatever reason, the movie just doesn't have that X-factor that would make it a beloved cult classic. It certainly offers a lot of cute and silly fun and many laughs, but it tends to get bogged down in too many subplots and winds up running longer than it needs to. Things do come together at the end, but it's hard to determine whether the rabid zombie fan will get what they love out of this movie or whether it will need to find its audience elsewhere.
