Review: Maggie

http://pubfilm.com/maggie-2015-full-hd-pubfilm-free.html

For Mother's Day, I got to pick our Saturday night viewing, so we shelled out a few bucks to watch the new indie zombie flick Maggie on OnDemand. Overall, the movie was strong. It was original and smart and it had a cohesive feel.

The first thing you notice when you're deciding to watch this movie is that it contains Arnold Schwarzenegger in an unexpected leading role. For a man who has spent his recent years picking up a pay check for somewhat blase action movies and, you know, governing one of the largest states in the country, doing a movie like Maggie seems like an odd choice. The movie has a limited theatrical release and feels like an indie movie at every turn. I was never a big Arnold fan, but I have to respect that he cares enough about the craft of acting to pick up a role like this that promises him nothing in the way of fame or fortune.

That said, I kind of wish he wasn't in it. It isn't that he doesn't do a good job acting--he does. Still, he's just so incredibly recognizable that he takes you out of it every once and a while because you're just like, "hey, that guy was the terminator...oh, right...pay attention to the zombie movie." Other than him, I was pretty impressed with the acting. Abigail Breslin was decent as his daughter who is slowly succumbing to a zombie virus with a 6-8 week incubation period. She looked and felt realistic in her processing of her depressing but inevitable fate. The best performance, however, was from Joely Richardson. I remember Richardson from The Patriot where her most notable achievements, let's be honest, were her wardrobe and her cleavage, but in this she really brings the story to life in a realistic way. Richardson plays Breslin's stepmother who sends her own children away to care for Breslin as the disease becomes more and more advanced. While you don't exactly "like" her character, you absolutely understand her choices. She seems realistic and complex in a very human and honest way.

http://bloody-disgusting.com/videos/3341777/look-zombie-eyes-maggie-clip/

Aside from the acting, one of the major strengths of this film is in the simplicity and tightness of the narrative. At first, some of the scenes seem unnecessary, but the filmmakers have weaved a simple and important story in which all the pieces of the puzzle are very important in the end. And in a genre that's so often about splashing zombie brains across the cement, we rarely get a story that's entirely focused on telling the other side of the story. This story reminds us that zombies are people, and that when they turn, they leave behind mothers and fathers and children who love them and often can't let them go. The movie is slow and is far more drama than anything else, but that's the beauty of it. It shows us 90 minutes of grieving. It takes us though the stages of grief through a few different character perspectives and makes the zombie genre feel real. It reminds us that, as much as we may think it from time to time, we really don't want the zombie apocalypse to be a real thing.

http://screenrant.com/schwarzenegger-maggie-movie-2015-release-date/

The apocalyptic landscape and art direction were spot on in this movie. Receiving marks for originality, this film depicts a world in which the disease affects not only humans but also possibly plant life, which presents additional apocalyptic problems. This aids the futile mood of the movie with shots of barren fields and burning crops. Overall, I just like the film's approach to the zombie infection. We've never seen a zombie virus with an incubation period like this. In some films, the turn is almost immediate, while in others it can take a few hours, but in this film the burn is slow but still inevitable. Bitten people last for 6-8 weeks which means that they are released back home for a sort of undead hospice care, and that's just eerie. Also, I like that, like in films like Contagion, this "apocalypse" is more realistic. The virus hasn't killed everyone. Society still exists, just not well. This is more honest to how devastating diseases like this have happened in human history.

https://mountainx.com/movies/reviews/maggie/

In the negative column, I had a little trouble believing that in a country that detained an Ebola nurse in a tent due to panicked fear of pandemic, the authorities would ever allow bitten people to return home to the care of their families until they were more advanced in the stages of the disease. The more the film went on, the more I bought into this piece of the storytelling, but it was definitely hard to swallow at first.

The writing was usually good, but it had the occasional trite line or conversation. Nothing major, but it could have been a little more original and authentic in some of the conversations. Still, the film thrives in its silences, just like The Dead, so a little bit of hackneyed dialogue or disorienting Arnold-ness does little to break the overall mood and meaning of the film.

Maggie is in theaters now and is also available on OnDemand. It's not really a "must see in theaters" film, not because it isn't really good, but more because it's not cinematically grandiose. It's a small, lovely little film about letting go and accepting the inevitable. It's a good allegory for terminal illness as well as the early days of AIDs, and it says a lot in ninety minutes that you don't typically get from the zombie genre. Find time for this movie.