Maggie

First of all, this is not a horror movie. You might not even call it a zombie movie, even though people transform into zombies, urging the autorities to put people in quarantain which is the final stage before simply killing them. It's also not an action movie. IIt's an effective drama, that serves well as a metaphore for children groing up, transforming, and the inability of adults to transform with them. The biggest surprise is Arnold Schwarzenegger who makes you forget his action roots and is a loving father who choses his daughter above everything else. But It's mostly Breslin who sucks the audience into her slow and inevitable transformation, and the emotions that comes with it.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

A contagious virus has spread across America that is causing the infected to slowly mutate in to cannibalistic zombies. Wade Vogel's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) would be one such person, a young girl grimly aware of her terrible predicament. As the inevitable closes in, father and daughter bond in a final, all encompassing way, before they're drawn towards a terrifying final outcome.

After his much hyped comeback a few years ago, Schwarzenegger has achieved what can only at best be called the most hit and miss results with his new batch of explosive, '80s flavoured action films. There was still something resembling an audience, but most people's tastes have cleaned up quite a bit. And so, out of nowhere, it seems, he delivers this latest offering, which on paper comes off just like one of his regular shoot 'em up type films, with him versus zombies. But instead, he's taken such a plot line and given it a more mature angle, as a more tender and heartfelt examination of the final days of a father and daughter, that shows a departure from his usual type of fare.

As more emotionally driven as the plot is, it doesn't really have the best sense of structure or direction, and instead seems to be driven more on a moody, lingering sense of atmosphere and tension, with the lighting drained out and brightened up in subsequent shots to affect the mood. Debut feature length director Henry Hobson has shown a certain knack and sense of style behind the camera, but he needs to go back to school a little on his structural narrative abilities, and crafting a film that has somewhere to go in spite of it's heart.

So, we have it, then, Arnie's most bizarre film, ever, a totally unexpected and different effort from him that's appeared out the blue. In spite of it's strangeness, it's better than anything he's done lately, and shows a more mature and emotional side developing after so many years. ***

A beautiful film in regards to its humanity as shared through the film's characters.

A family is confronted by their teenage daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) who is contaminated with a dreadful disease which is Zombieism. She did not catch it inadvertently but caught it by having been bitten while out in an escapade on a night out when the town was invaded by zombies when she new it was forbidden to go. Teenage rebellion against the family like the two brats in the movie 28 weeks later that caused the destruction of London and Paris.

Now, this movie depicts what it would be like if a member of a family would be confronted with a contagious disease which is irreversible and that only the death of the infected one can preserve the safety of the others.

Indeed, the movie goes on a step by step development of the contagion of Maggi and the results on her environment such as family, friends and other members such as the police, doctor which will lead her at the end to commit suicide.

The only problem I have with the movie is this: Can life continue as usual with an extreme infected member of the family? Further more, with such an infection in this case Zombieism, at what moment does Maggie lose her humanity since all along the movie it is said that she should be quarantined ipso facto. A reference to the Anne Frank Diaries is a must to understand life as usual in extreme conditions.

In fact, all along the movie she shows no loss of her humanity. We can clearly see this in the scene where Wade Voegel (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sleeping on a sofa and Maggie approaches and smells him. Her transformation to a complete zombie has not yet peaked to the irreversible.

However, if the doctor and police insist she be put away, have they lost their humanity knowing there is nothing that can be done and to save the rest of the population Maggie must be killed? Who is truly human here?

We can also ask, how far will a family go in denial or semi-denial? Does denial mean keeping one eye open while sleeping?

At the end, she commits the inevitable by putting an end to her life.

I ask myself this question: Was she dead at the moment she was bitten and her loving family going into denial or did slowly die as to have a family act in a way to have her live live as long as possible with them showing the last of their humanity as they know it when she dies.

As Hamlet would state it: To kill her immediately or not to kill her immediately, that is the question.

Maggie is the film that finally shows an emotional side to zombie films. This movie is not about killing all the infected people in sight. I think that Maggie has a least four excellent performances. The best is definitely Abigail Breslin. It is Arnold Schwarzenegger who is going to bring people to the theatre to see this movie but it really is Breslin's film, she is really the star. Schwarzenegger however is not his normal self. The man can act, and I'm sure that this film will never receive the credit it should because Schwarzenegger is in it and people are too quick to judge it by its cover. Maggie is slow but the performances managed to keep me interested. The film is also dark which perfectly captures its tone. I think that people need to go into this movie with an unbiased mind and it could really be enjoyed.

This is in many ways a good, strange and different film, it is a zombie film, but not in the way you would expect, this is a drama about a dad finding and taking care of his daughter in her last days of an illness. The illness being she is turning into a zombie after she got bit and everything is treated in this film as it is just a terminal disease, there is no cure, there is a time frame, there is some signs to what is happening, but in the end you can't survive it.

It is a slow moving drama and really is the storyline and the characters and their interactions that is the film, we are talking a time frame of a week or so and we mainly follow Maggie and her dad and how they try to spend their last days together. We are slowly but steadily introduced to the plague that have been turning people into zombies and how people with the disease are being treated and eventually put away, because there is no cure, if you are bit, there are only three ways of going on, go to the camps where the rest of the zombies are kept, get some kind of shot that will kill you in a excruciating way or take the life of yourself by shooting, breaking your neck or other means.

It is a heartfelt movie that you really can't stop watching even though the story moves slowly ahead and it is not like any other zombie movie, it is insightful and interesting and really shows some aspects of life that has nothing to do with becoming a zombie, it could have been about any other terminal illness that can't be cured, but the zombie part is just a great twist to it all.

I was entertained and thoughtful after seeing it, it was really something other then I had expected.