“Hmmm … Rover never comes back to life at home.” It’s funnier if you imagine the woman from Airplane! saying it. And this is how the zombie apocalypse begins on the Red Crow reservation in 1981. The chief of police has a dog die on him, but a few hours later, the dog has other ideas. This brings up a point I always wanted to know about zombies – is zombie-ism a human-only disease? Mammal-only disease? And why?
Before the dog, it’s the salmon. Seriously? Is zombie-ism not limited by any among the animal kingdom? Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman) discovers his his freshly caught, killed, and gutted breakfast still has some life in it. Something fishy goin’ on there, I can tells ya. Hey salmon, if you lack guts, how are you supposed to digest that which you eat? At some point, a severed nerve has got to stop the muscle reaction even if the creature isn’t dead, right? Right?
Pretty soon, Sheriff (“Andy?”) Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) recognizes a zombie outbreak … and it just so happens that his delinquent kid Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) has been stuck in a jail cell with a zombie. Stuck in a jail cell may not be the worst place to be when the zombie outbreak happens. However, in a jail cell with a zombie, well, that’s not where I’d want to be.
One thing I genuinely enjoyed about this film was the failure to own up to being a movie. For instance, bad people are still bad people; they don’t change just because zombies showed up. And zombies are zombies. If they eat flesh, they eat flesh; they don’t care where it comes from. There was literal dick eating on screen. There was implied literal pussy eating. The zombies in Blood Quantum made no distinction; that’s quite a progressive collection of undead.
I did mention this film distasteful and gross, right? No? Well, Blood Quantum is distasteful and gross. It is certainly not for every palate, unless, of course, you enjoy a good entrail party.
Blood Quantum is kind of purist horror – we don’t have heroes so much as survivors, and that number dwindles every ten minutes or so. The attacks sensationalize blood, gore, and other stomach turning biology, and yet there’s something pure about the distastefulness; this is probably what a zombie apocalypse would look like, not divided into sanctioned areas of the clean and the undead, but one big mess of blood and ugh. Also hard not to appreciate the setting of the Red Crow reservation (wiki says the film was shot on the Kahnawake and Listuguj reserves in Quebec) and a cast almost entirely comprised of Native Americans. Progressive cast, progressive shooting location, progressive zombies. Where’s Native American Flo?
The Great North has gotten a little rocky
Undead and some gruesome chopsocky
But they’re Canadians, Bing
Which means just one thing
After brains, they’ll want to play hockey
Not Rated (See: R), 96 Minutes
Director: Jeff Barnaby
Writer: Jeff Barnaby
Genre: The tribal undead
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Those interested in equality even in the little things, like where a zombie outbreak occurs
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The blood shy
