Maggie
Directed by: Henry Hobson
Written by: John Scott 3
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, Rachel Whitman Groves, Douglas M. Griffin, J.D. Evermore, Bryce Romero
Drama/Horror/Thriller - 95 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 May 2015
Written by: John Scott 3
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, Rachel Whitman Groves, Douglas M. Griffin, J.D. Evermore, Bryce Romero
Drama/Horror/Thriller - 95 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 7 May 2015
You hear the words ‘zombie movie’ and you flash on frantic hysteria in 28 Days Later… or global annihilation in World War Z. Maggie turns the zombie genre film on its head. Folks do not automatically morph into flesh-eating undead mode upon first bite. Transformation takes weeks. The infected know they are doomed; their flesh decays, they smell meat when they see other humans, and they suffer emotionally because both the cursed and their families await with dread the inevitable end.
Maggie’s plot lurches forward on zombie transformation, but it is inherently a heavy family drama attempting to get the audience to ask themselves what they would do in a similar situation. Maggie fails as an effective film because we never connect with Maggie as a character. The filmmaking also went too far when less would have been more. The lighting is distracting and the sound is over-the-top. This contributes to Maggie’s inability to elicit the necessary sympathy to make an audience care enough about her. Maggie is a creative attempt to fashion a low budget, indie film about emotional and physical collapse with just a splash of zombie gore which never takes off; it stumbles and plods along as a stereotypical zombie would.
Maggie’s plot lurches forward on zombie transformation, but it is inherently a heavy family drama attempting to get the audience to ask themselves what they would do in a similar situation. Maggie fails as an effective film because we never connect with Maggie as a character. The filmmaking also went too far when less would have been more. The lighting is distracting and the sound is over-the-top. This contributes to Maggie’s inability to elicit the necessary sympathy to make an audience care enough about her. Maggie is a creative attempt to fashion a low budget, indie film about emotional and physical collapse with just a splash of zombie gore which never takes off; it stumbles and plods along as a stereotypical zombie would.
While already unconventional, Maggie’s most startling revelation is Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role. The world famous action hero from Commando, Predator, and The Expendables franchise stars for the first time in a minimally-financed, independent film. Sure, there are undead roaming around, but Schwarzenegger’s character, farmer Wade Vogel, is first and foremost a family man who loves his oldest child, Maggie (Abigail Breslin, 2013’s Ender’s Game). Wade is a father with blinders on in the worst position a father could ever imagine; he must watch his daughter lose her humanity while he wrestles dark questions including what he will do with her when she loses herself altogether.
Do not be misled by the simple sentence, “Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in a zombie movie.” This is not false, but he spends most of his time in a depressed stupor. He tears up every other scene. Maggie is not even Kindergarten Cop; it is Terms of Endearment. Schwarzenegger pulls it off though. We believe him as man losing what is most dear. He burns his diseased crops. He confronts the local police itching to remove Maggie from the outside and quarantine her. He protects his rural homestead from nomadic, wandering zombies. He does all of this with an understated, yet iron resolve. When it comes to Maggie though, he is a pile of mush.
Filmed by first time director Henry Hobson, Maggie’s look does a lot to get in its own way. Hobson chose dark and washed out. In every scene shot outside, the sun is either just rising or just setting. There are no vibrant colors. Set in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere toward the end of a global pandemic, perhaps this is what the world looks like to the survivors. What it looks like to the audience is an unnecessary filter which the cinematographer needs to take off so we can see more than shades of gray.
The sound effects are also askew. Random shrieks and screams no character in the room produces pierce more pulse-raising sections. Maggie chops off one of her own fingers and throws it down the garbage disposal. The sound of these actions is far more gruesome than what it looks like, which you think would be the other way around. Hobson shot for a tone and ambience Maggie does not need. Schwarzenegger and Breslin are more than capable of pulling off characters in an impossible situation through their talent alone. The oppressive lighting and unsettling sound only frustrate instead of enhance.
I appreciate innovative takes on tried and true genres. 28 Days Later… succeeded because it was the first time we ever saw zombies move as fast as Olympic sprinters. Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead worked because they took a normally serious and adrenaline-fuelled subject and made it funny. Maggie took the same shot. This zombie film asks deep questions about relationships and the inevitability of death, but it does not sufficiently answer them. True emotional scenes and wider understanding are out of its reach. I applaud the idea but I shake my head at the director’s choices and anemic result.
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