I’m gonna have a hard time convincing you that Schwarzenegger and zombies isn’t something you’ve already seen. This isn’t a Michael Bay special; there are fires, but no explosions. And I’m gonna have an even harder time convincing you this is a good film.
While I might live another 50 years, I never thought I’d see Arnold Schwarzenegger in an Indie film. You go, you neophytic unsung thespian, you! Make those people learn your name – oh, this is bad. I gotta tell ya, unless you’re as talented as Benedict Cumberbatch, you’re fighting an uphill battle with that name of yours. Whoa! What’s with that accent? Oh, I’m sorry, kid; this acting thing might not be for you.
The United States is in post-apocalyptic zombie land. As doctors have contained, if not solved, the epidemic, chaos has yielded to intense paranoia. If you got bitten, you’re gonna die, but the biters don’t move very fast and we’ve all seen “Walking Dead” too many times, hence, the pre-zombie infected are allowed shore leave or furlough or whatever you call it when you voluntarily let infected pre-zombies out of quarantine. And the hospital even gives helpful take-home pamphlets: “So Your Grandmother Is Going to Be a Zombie – what you should know…”
In what can only described an impressive age discrepancy, Schwarzenegger (currently aged 67) plays Wade, father to Maggie (Abigail Breslin, who just turned 19). Maggie was bitten a few weeks ago and Wade is now claiming her. There’s a somber feel to all this – the faces are grim, the day is cloudy, nobody hides the idea that Maggie’s days are numbered. She’s herself for now, but her blackened forearm is ugly and her eyes just a shade below lucid.
Now despite the fact that the Governator slays multiple zombies in Maggie, this is far from a classic Schwarzenegger role; he’s a kinder, gentler Terminator. He feels badly about having to axe the neighbors (well, who let them out, anyway?). When the remaining non-zombie neighbor returns wielding a gun in the dark of night, Arnold does nothing to quell the situation. She wants to blow him away? Nobody’s gonna stop her.
That’s the mood of Maggie – it’s not about killing and
survival; it’s about the reality of losing a loved one to something horrible. The zombie plague is treated much more like AIDS than monsterdom. Is that the message here? That AIDS is like a zombie plague, or the converse, that we’ve made AIDS victims into monsters? If either of these messages is the intention , Maggie is about 30 years too late.
Self-pitying yet not ready for the afterlife, Abigail Breslin does the dying teen genre proud here; she’s all out of ideas and places to run. She takes up a farm swing – the white isolated farm house is standard celluloid issue, btw; you’ve seen this place in half a dozen other films from Nebraska to Looper – and busts an index finger open after a fall. The spewing, blackened, corpse-like digit is so vile, she cuts it off entirely. Nobody seems entirely concerned about this behavior. Is the horror that she cut off her own finger or that she’ll be cut off herself before her time?
♪Wake up Maggie I think I need something to slay you, too
It’s past doomsday and I really don’t think this is cool
I know I kept you from docs, and I kinda had to clean some clocks
Oh Maggie I couldn’t pretend any more
You asked me to take you home. Why do corpses roam?
You’re now undead. Does it even hurt?
The morning beams when they’re in your face match your ghostly eyes
But that don’t worry me half as much as the euthanize
I saw you slice your hand. And now I gotta take a stand
Oh Maggie the guy who kills you should be me
You got bit when you were away. This might even be worse than “gay”
You now crave flesh and that’s a pain I can live without♫
Rated PG-13, 95 Minutes
D: Henry Hobson
W: John Scott 3 (Not a misprint)
Genre: How to nurture your zombie
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Undead family members
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Those who showed up for Terminator
♪ Parody inspired by “Maggie May”
