Maggie
Once upon a time, films
about zombies were occasional visitors to the horror genre. But with it’s
resurgence in the early 00’s and some top quality films making a dint on the
sub-genre, films about zombies are not just part of the horror genre anymore.
“Zombie” is its own genre now, like Horror, Action, or Adventure. Aside from
the several films a year that focus on the flesh eating ghouls, one of the
biggest TV shows in the world right now, “The Walking Dead” proves how
prevalent our current fascination with the undead is as a form of
entertainment. And zombies can be portrayed differently in each film; as in “28
Days Later”, they behaved more like infected, erratic people with no control
over their instincts but who can still run fast. Then you have the “Night of
the Living Dead” portrayal, which was really just corpses slowly walking around
that would eat anything they stumbled across.
Amongst this crowded
genre, comes the film “Maggie”. At first glance you might be interested to
watch it based on it’s main star being Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I’ll make on
thing clear; this is not your average Arnie movie. There are no action scenes,
not a single one-liner and it leaves out the big shootouts, car chases and
explosions. In fact, Schwarzenegger proves he can actually act here, and turns
in a tender, thoughtful performance about a man battling to hold onto to his
teenager daughter… as she slowly turns into a zombie.
In this film, the world is
already well into an epidemic on a global scale, with millions if not billions
of people already infected. They’re not being referred to as zombies, and when
they do succumb to their illness, it’s being called “The Turn”. And in the case
of this movie, the effect is slow. Taking up to eight weeks before an
individual loses their humanity, they can still go about their life and do every
day things, but slowly and ever so surely, they start to deteriorate, in body
and mind.
Schwarzenegger plays Wade
Vogel, a farmer in Americas mid-west who picks his daughter up from the city
hospital after she was bitten. The doctors tell him she has about eight weeks
and will have to come into quarantine at a certain point. If her father doesn’t
bring her back, the authorities will come and get her. Returning to his farm
house with his teenager daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) Wade has a second wife,
after his first died years ago and two smaller children. The younger kids go
and live with their aunt as soon as Maggie returns home, where as her step mum
stays around, despite her hesitation and fear of what her step-daughter is
gradually becoming.
As the time looms where
Wade must make a choice, he will do everything in his power to keep his
daughter alive, and sending her to quarantine is his last resort. Despite the
advice he is given by doctors and the local police, he keeps his daughter by
his side, as he just can’t stand to lose her, despite the fact she is becoming
something else, which he cannot do anything about.
Maggie is not your typical
zombie film, as there are no scary scenes of people being chased, eaten or
quickly turning into zombies themselves. It’s a film about the effect such a
transformation can have on an individual and those closest to them. Abigail
Breslin burst onto the scene at the age of ten in the hit indie film, “Little
Miss Sunshine” which earned her an Oscar nomination. All grown up now, she’s
made a secure jump from child actor to young leading lady, and turns in a
convincing and harrowing display of a teenage girl slowly changing into
something else.
And as for Schwarzenegger,
I was very impressed by his work here. Since returning to films after leaving
politics about four years ago, he has stuck to what he was known for so far,
making some standard action films. But as he approaches seventy, Arnie knows he
can’t be the big tough action hero forever, and is starting to pursue other
avenues. Good on him, because it pays off well here. He captures the experience
of a man under immense pressure and anguish very well, and holds back any of
his trademark mannerisms and expressions that have populated all his action
films. He genuinely immerses himself into his role as a father suffering the
pain of the hardest decision any father would have to make; does he let his
daughter slowly die in front of him, send her away to quarantine and an unknown
fate, or take her life before she turns and tries to take his?
It’s not any situation
that any person could imagine experiencing in the real world, but as zombie
films have become so popular of late, they have moved away from the traditional
monster fest, to more dramatic, thought provoking and emotionally driven
stories. Maggie relishes in the heavy content of such a dilemma, and chooses a
more realistic and gritty approach, as if this was something that could
actually happen one day. And for that, Maggie is a film that wallows in the
reality of it’s characters problems, and may not be a hugely memorable addition
to the zombie genre, but it’s certainly a different take and shows that
Schwarzenegger could have a successful post-action career once he hit’s 70.
I’ll be watching with curiosity.
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