Fluke

The businessman Thomas Johnson dies in a car crash and wakes as a dog. In time he begins to remember his old life: his wife, his son, his business partner. He also has doubts about how the crash happened. As a dog, he tries to get home. The film is not interested in the fantastical premise. It is interested in a man seeing from outside what he did to his family: as a human Thomas was hardly ever at home, and as a dog he can watch them for the first time. Its most painful passage is not the reunion but the reunion not being enough. The form looks like a family film: scenes shot from the dog's point of view, a camera at ground level, voiceover. The tone is far darker than that suggests. Carlo Carlei directed, from James Herbert's novel. Herbert was known as a horror writer and the book's gloom has carried into the film. Matthew Modine plays Thomas, Nancy Travis his wife and Eric Stoltz the partner; Modine also voices the dog. Samuel L. Jackson voices another dog living on the street. Who it is for: viewers who like stories told from an animal's view and unusual fantastical premises. Who it is not for: anyone planning to watch with children. It was sold as a family film but is built on death, grief and abandonment, and its ending is heavy.