To my surprise, the new indie/horror/art house/Schwarzenegger flick Maggie showed up on Apple TV/iTunes streaming (it is also in limited theatrical release). Maggie is, indeed, a small indie movie with art house desires… a contemplative, slow-paced, methodical sad story about a dad (Arnold) and his daughter (Abigail Breslin) who has been infected by a zombie virus and how she slowly withdraws and falls victim to the disease.
You see, the difference in this zombie movie is that it’s really more of a plague or pandemic film… in that the story is technically about zombies is incidental and could have probably been ejected. This is more of a movie about dealing with someone who has a disease that is slowly killing them (only with the added awful that they will eventually want to bite you at the end). The catch is, that it takes up to eight weeks for a person who is infected to turn… which makes the usual zombie movie “oh no, he’s been bitten!” thing into a slow, inevitable burn. It’s the opposite of 28 Days Later (instant-turn) and changes the dynamic of the regular zombie movie.
In this movie’s fiction, the outbreak is well on its way, the infected are being quarantined, and if you kill a couple walkers on your property, the police will still come out to investigate. Society is on the edge but it hasn’t broken down yet.
Arnold tries hard and mostly accomplishes what he seems to be trying to do… to play a dad who can’t let go of his daughter despite what everyone is telling him to do. He still sounds like Arnold and you’d never mistake him for the farmer he’s trying to be, but I think he does a credible job otherwise of playing a man slowly crumbling on the inside.
I just wish I could recommend the film. It tries real hard and it earnestly wants to be a thinking man’s zombie film. A contemplative, sad, morose tale of a dad and his dying daughter. It kind of gets there but never really achieves being much more than just a long, slow drag. There are some very nice and sad moments but the movie had to be more consistent and interesting in order to recommend it.
Score: 67