Mar 2023
I'm not seeing any posts about this movie. Sorry, if I'm missing any. Anyway, Maggie is a zombie near-apocalypse story featuring Arnold Schwartzenegger. But, it's not what you might have expected, if that was all you knew about it going into it.
The idea is, there is a sort of slow-moving zombie apocalypse going on. People get bitten, and they turn into zombies, but the transformation takes much longer than in most of these movies. I think they said it takes six to eight weeks for someone to turn. In this movie, the action takes place over the course of about a month or six weeks, if I have this right. We are told that Arnold's character has spent two weeks looking for his daughter after she was bitten, prior to the beginning of the movie. She ran away from home so as to keep her family safe from her, as she changed, but Arnold was having none of that, so he hunted her down and brought her home so they could enjoy as much time as possible as a family before she totally zombied out. "Home" is an isolated house surrounded by fields and some woods, in farm country, supposedly somewhere in Missouri or eastern Kansas. The house reminded me of Melinda Dillon's character's house, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The US (possibly the whole world) is clearly in pretty rough shape, in this movie, but it isn't in a state of total anarchy. Hospitals still function, most people still seem to be employed, the police (or at least the local rural sheriff) are/is still doing their/his job, etc etc etc. But, there are zombies here and there, and they are biting enough people that the plague keeps moving along. It looks like probably the vast majority of people are uninfected and going about their lives, but enough people are infected that it does affect people's lives, at least a little. Sayyy... maybe three or four percent of the country is infected? Something like that.
When the authorities learn that someone is infected, their job seems to be to go get that person, and take them to a quarantine facility. But, the quarantine facilities are absolute nightmares, where they just stash all the infected people in close quarters together, even the ones who are still very early in the progress of the disease. Beause the quarantine facilities suck THAT MUCH, lots of people choose to keep their infected family members at home, and just keep it a secret. They try to keep an eye on the infected family members. But, of course, things aften go wrong, because it is not possible to foresee precisely when someone will completely zombie out. So, the disease continues to exist and spread, although it doesn't spread as fast as it could because at least people are aware of what is happening.
The story is mostly sort of a dual character study of Arnold and his infected daughter Maggie, who is played excellently, I thought, by Abigail Breslin. It is about their father/daughter love, and how they try to maintain their bond for as long as possible, as the disease progresses inexorably. There is never any talk about a cure, it is just known from the outset that Maggie is doomed. You just root for her to have as normal a ife as possible, for as long as possible, and you root for Arnold to have the chance to be as good a dad as the situation allows for him to be.
The mood, or the atmosphere of this movie, seems to be what they wanted to develop the most here. It is usually sad, and mostly thoughtful, with only a little gratuitous violence and gore. There is some of both, but not too too too much of either. For me, the sombre mood kept making me think of Stake Land (2010), or even of the very sad post-nuclear war TV-movie Testament (1983). In a bizarre way, I was also reminded of Leaving Las Vegas (1995), just in the sense that one of the main characters is known to be doomed right from the beginning, and you are just supposed to accept that and deal with it.
There are some really memorable moments... I'm not sure if I should talk about them, because they could spoil things. I will just say that you should keep an eye out for signs and symptoms of Maggie's gradual zombification. Some of them are subtle, and they aren't always announced explicitly.
I just thought it was a moving, sad movie, and not at all what I expected from an Arnold S zombie apocalypse movie. I mean, come on. But, I respect the movie, and I have to say I respect both Arnold and Abigail B for choosing to do it. Joely Richardson is in this too, as the stepmother, by the way! I wanted to say more about her, but it would probably get a bit spoilery if I said too much about her scenes.
Anyway, yeah. Interesting stuff. If you want to try something a bit different, you could do a lot worse. Two thumbs up from Tommix.
The idea is, there is a sort of slow-moving zombie apocalypse going on. People get bitten, and they turn into zombies, but the transformation takes much longer than in most of these movies. I think they said it takes six to eight weeks for someone to turn. In this movie, the action takes place over the course of about a month or six weeks, if I have this right. We are told that Arnold's character has spent two weeks looking for his daughter after she was bitten, prior to the beginning of the movie. She ran away from home so as to keep her family safe from her, as she changed, but Arnold was having none of that, so he hunted her down and brought her home so they could enjoy as much time as possible as a family before she totally zombied out. "Home" is an isolated house surrounded by fields and some woods, in farm country, supposedly somewhere in Missouri or eastern Kansas. The house reminded me of Melinda Dillon's character's house, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The US (possibly the whole world) is clearly in pretty rough shape, in this movie, but it isn't in a state of total anarchy. Hospitals still function, most people still seem to be employed, the police (or at least the local rural sheriff) are/is still doing their/his job, etc etc etc. But, there are zombies here and there, and they are biting enough people that the plague keeps moving along. It looks like probably the vast majority of people are uninfected and going about their lives, but enough people are infected that it does affect people's lives, at least a little. Sayyy... maybe three or four percent of the country is infected? Something like that.
When the authorities learn that someone is infected, their job seems to be to go get that person, and take them to a quarantine facility. But, the quarantine facilities are absolute nightmares, where they just stash all the infected people in close quarters together, even the ones who are still very early in the progress of the disease. Beause the quarantine facilities suck THAT MUCH, lots of people choose to keep their infected family members at home, and just keep it a secret. They try to keep an eye on the infected family members. But, of course, things aften go wrong, because it is not possible to foresee precisely when someone will completely zombie out. So, the disease continues to exist and spread, although it doesn't spread as fast as it could because at least people are aware of what is happening.
The story is mostly sort of a dual character study of Arnold and his infected daughter Maggie, who is played excellently, I thought, by Abigail Breslin. It is about their father/daughter love, and how they try to maintain their bond for as long as possible, as the disease progresses inexorably. There is never any talk about a cure, it is just known from the outset that Maggie is doomed. You just root for her to have as normal a ife as possible, for as long as possible, and you root for Arnold to have the chance to be as good a dad as the situation allows for him to be.
The mood, or the atmosphere of this movie, seems to be what they wanted to develop the most here. It is usually sad, and mostly thoughtful, with only a little gratuitous violence and gore. There is some of both, but not too too too much of either. For me, the sombre mood kept making me think of Stake Land (2010), or even of the very sad post-nuclear war TV-movie Testament (1983). In a bizarre way, I was also reminded of Leaving Las Vegas (1995), just in the sense that one of the main characters is known to be doomed right from the beginning, and you are just supposed to accept that and deal with it.
There are some really memorable moments... I'm not sure if I should talk about them, because they could spoil things. I will just say that you should keep an eye out for signs and symptoms of Maggie's gradual zombification. Some of them are subtle, and they aren't always announced explicitly.
I just thought it was a moving, sad movie, and not at all what I expected from an Arnold S zombie apocalypse movie. I mean, come on. But, I respect the movie, and I have to say I respect both Arnold and Abigail B for choosing to do it. Joely Richardson is in this too, as the stepmother, by the way! I wanted to say more about her, but it would probably get a bit spoilery if I said too much about her scenes.
Anyway, yeah. Interesting stuff. If you want to try something a bit different, you could do a lot worse. Two thumbs up from Tommix.
