The film gives a satirical set of jabs at life in the 1950s when looked at purely through nostalgia’s lens. Fido takes that romanticized era and replaces the real paranoia of the Cold War with citizens being forced to coexist with the living dead.
It’s dark satire at its best, giving audiences a sense of familiarity through its parallels to the idealism portrayed from 1950s television and coating it with the sense of imprisonment.
Fido initially shows the living going on with their daily lives as though everything is under control, before revealing that they are all gated inside a well-constructed and heavily guarded version of reality.
These picturesque towns exist as cells inside a larger “wild zone,” where uncollared zombies roam free and are able to kill anyone foolish enough to venture outside of the protective fences. This revelation shows that, while safe, the citizens are really living lives with little individual control.
